


Haunted and Hunted

by suddenlyGoats



Series: Transcendence Fics [4]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Transcendence (Gravity Falls), Found Family, Gen, Neopronoun Use, Transcendence AU, ask to tag, past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-01
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-03 15:10:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 72,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8718655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suddenlyGoats/pseuds/suddenlyGoats
Summary: Answering a slightly unusual summon Alcor finds himself possessing a child, with no explanation as to who did this, why anyone would, or just how big this whole plot is. Absolutely no one is happy with these events.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is very much a story about fucked up kids having survived trauma and living with its consequences. It is not a story about traumatic things happening. There will not be graphic descriptions of anything. There will be some potentially triggering things, like casual suicide mentions. Nothing of this nature happens on screen or off.
> 
> I would say it's an overall positive fic themes aside.

“It has been postulated that a demon could be bound to an individual’s dreamscape in a similar manner that one can be bound to a single part of physical space. The Mcmenoman barrier that is found in dreamscapes of a cognitive class-3 organisms would, when properly enforced with the wards necessary to bind a demon, largely cut off the demon from its own power source, making it so one could theoretically use this technique to both contain and control a demon. The demon would only be bound while the host remains alive, and as most demons are powerful enough that even constricted they could still destroy a normal Mcmenoman barrier, and because such bindings would effectively force the demon to possess the host, this technique could not be used unless either a host was found within an unheard of cognitive class or a mechanism could be implemented to ensure the demon did not seek the destruction of the host.”

\- Excerpt from “On the Limitations of Modern Binding Techniques”, Dr Brinner, _The Journal of Theoretical Magics_

 

The premises were set up impeccably. The vinyl floor was completely smooth, with no marks besides the deeply engraved circle that dominated the room. Outside of the subject there was no living creature on site larger than 0.3 micrometers. The ley lines were carefully controlled to keep the amount of excess magical energy to an absolute minimum. The walls were heavily reinforced. The floor of the experiment, as well as the two floors in the facility directly beneath the worksite, were temporarily evacuated outside of necessary personal.

 

Security was minimal. If everything went right very little would be needed. If things did not go right it was deemed best to minimize potential losses.

 

Things were not going to go wrong. The scenario was well rehearsed. Every factor that could be controlled was, including those expected to have largely negligible effects.

 

The subject was in the center of the circle. They were presently heavily sedated. They were presently restrained using chains plated in pure silver, which connected to the ceiling to prevent any disturbance to the circle.

 

Everything was perfect.

 

Everything was ready.

 

A small drone rolled into the premises. It was holding a large rat and a knife contained in a tray. The drone did not have much manual dexterity or gripping strength. The rat was heavily sedated. The knife was pure silver. It entered the circle, and reached the subject. Slowly the drone cut into the rat. The drone could not move quickly. Any outside factor that made the drone move too quickly would cause it to break entirely.

 

The rat was bleeding profusely. It had also been given an injection of a powerful anticoagulant. Blood filled the tray. Blood coated the knife. The drone slowly put the tray on a platform hanging from the ceiling, and slowly brushed the flat of the knife against each of the six rune inscribed circles on the subjects chest. It first put blood on the five exterior circles before making a minor incision on the sixth interior circle. The subject was not bleeding profusely. The subject had not been given anything that might add additional complications outside of the sedatives.

 

The drone exited the premises.

 

Everything was going exactly as anticipated.

 

From the observational room, six mages began to chant. The chant was projected into the experiment room using five speakers inset into the walls of the room. The chant was muted in the observational room using a simple charm.

 

At the last verse of the chant, the tray containing the rat and associated pool of blood was inverted, spilling its contents. The tray mechanism retracted back into the ceiling.

 

A ring of blue fire filled the circle on the floor, before rushing towards the subject and igniting the circles on their chest with bright cyan. This was anticipated.

 

The subject appeared instantly active. This was anticipated.

 

The subject was expressing signs of anger and confusion. This was anticipated.

 

The subject was expelling large amounts of cyan fire. This was an accounted-for possibility.

 

The chains that had been constraining the subject were rendered inoperable from the heat. This was unideal, but an accounted-for possibility.

 

A facility security alarm went off. Something had broken a window on the other side of the building. There was no indication that this had anything to do with the experiment. This was not anticipated. This was alarming.

 

The subject had left the circle with a negligible amount of resistance. This was anticipated.

 

A facility alert notification informed staff that security footage from the east plaza was no longer being received and that two restraining units were no longer communicating with the security network. The situation was beginning to seem slightly fucked.

 

The project lead failed to initiate contact with subject through speakers as planned. The project lead was consulting with the security lead. The backup lead was rehearsing the prepared speech as they finalized adjustments on the equipment.

 

Fire alarms began to go off, manually activated from the east plaza.

 

The security lead was redirecting five floors’ worth of drones.

 

And that’s when the bomb went off.

 

* * *

 

There were no absolutely no words great enough to communicate the pure fury that filled Alcor, that became his very existence. He was possessing someone, they were a child. He did not possess people. He did not harm children. He couldn’t identify who this was. He couldn’t see their soul on the mindscape. He could see the curling silver smoke dissipating from the sacrificed rat but there was not any sign of the soul that should be inhabiting this body. He couldn’t access his library of knowledge. This pathetic chamber was absolutely nothing to him and yet it was stubbornly remaining unleveled.

 

The room was filled with his fire. It was the only thing that flowed freely through him. Slowly it pushed at the walls, burning through them. The slowness of it was intolerable; it would be faster if only he had any idea where to focus his damn magic. He should know where the door was. The walls’ apparent seamlessness shouldn’t matter to him, this should be no challenge at all and yet _somehow_ it was.

 

There was a faint taste of panic in the air. It was sweet, a tantalizing taste of what was to come. What he would bring.

 

There was a faint pain coming from the body’s chest. A piercing burning sensation that cut deeply into the skin. It was actually a fairly severe pain; the body was choking on its own breath. He didn’t care.

 

Someone dared use him, someone dared try to make a tool out of him. And they didn’t even have the decency to show their face. And they were just toying with him now, letting him bash his head against the wall without even revealing their intentions, waiting for what? Him to exhaust himself? He was the most powerful entity on the planet he was _not_ going to simply give in to this… whatever this was. He would break out of this pathetic prison, like he did every attempt to contain him, and he would **_ḿ̹̗͔a̗͙̞̪͎͔̫k̶̳̜͓̥̻̗̝e̟͔̪̝͓̺͡ ̜ͅth̲͙̫é̮͈͓̣m̦̲̻͢ ̸̹̬p͈̬͔̫̯a̺͖̻̠̯̭̝y̷͓̹_**.

 

He could faintly hear an alarm go off. He didn’t care in the slightest.

 

The massive explosion wasn’t so much heard as felt, roaring against one of the walls, shaking the world in a symphony of screeching metal and breaking glass. It managed to register as probably significant, if all else failed because the shaking floor caused him to fall on his ass for the first time in centuries.

 

The shaking stopped. His fire sizzled with little direction from him. For a moment, things were still. The moment was obnoxiously broken all at once as several additional alarms screamed into life, each somehow managing to drown the others out so there was no longer any distinct patterns but a single panicked wail.

 

It was unideal, but would be a satisfactory enough soundtrack for what was going to happen next.

 

The sounds were slightly louder in the center of the wall. He pulled his fire to him, savoring the protests of the body, and slammed it forward through the hidden door. It held, just for a moment, hidden runes desperately trying to hold back the tidal wave of energy, before shattering forward; projecting wood, metal, and cement down the long hallway like a canon.

 

He grinned, face protesting how wide he ordered it to spread, and took a deep breath. It didn’t matter what his summoners had planned. He was in control now.

 

_stopitstopitstopit_

 

Alcor hesitated. The feeling of panic from earlier was stronger now, filling with savory despair, but it wasn’t coming from down the hall, or from another room. It was coming from him. From around him.

 

A breath happened. It wasn’t a smooth breath, but a short choked thing that couldn’t decide if it was a gasp or a snarl and mostly failed to be anything at all.

 

“You’re still alive?” He said, louder than he liked in order to be heard over the alarms. He knew why he couldn’t see the child’s soul.

 

_stopstopstopsto- what?_

 

“You. This is your body right?” He looked around quickly. Making them pay would have to come later, he needed to focus on getting the child to safety and determining exactly what the hell those pathetic fucked up mortals had done.

 

_its me why can’t i move whats happening_

 

“You’re being possessed. I don’t know how because I sure as hell didn’t initiate this, but apparently it’s happening anyway.”

 

The long halls were yellowing plaster, illuminated by bright white LEDs inlaid in the ceiling. Large black numbers were periodically placed, some with arrows and some without. There did not appear to be a convenient directory on what any of the numbers might signify. Hallways branched off in a labyrinthine network, turning and splitting in seemingly random ways. Although Alcor rushed down the hallway he did so aimlessly.

 

Miraculously, nothing in the immediate surroundings was on fire.

 

“Do you remember anything that lead up to this?” Alcor asked. “If I actually knew what happened I might be able to fix this.”

 

_i didn’t really understand anything that was happening. the doctors refused to talk to me._

 

“I don’t care if you understood,” Alcor said. “I just need to know what happened. You know that there were people doing things. Who were they? What did they do?”

 

_they um, they said that there was a new disease going around and that they just needed to take me in for a bit and do some tests. i thought they worked for the government, the carestaff acted like they did._

_then i was here, and the doctors kept doing things and they seemed like normal doctor things but they wouldn’t talk to me wouldn’t tell me what was happening and then they made me sleep and then when i woke up my chest hurt and there were these weird circles and then they made me sleep again and now i can’t i can’tican’t_

 

“If they could successfully come off as government enough to take a child… I should have noticed a group this organized. It never should have gotten this far.” The hallway terminated at a push door that didn’t have any locking mechanism. He shoved it open. “I suppose it would be unreasonable to expect that you would have actually learned anything useful. I should have paid attention to the summoning circle; it probably wouldn’t be that hard to reverse engineer it. Do you think it’s too late to go back? If this is an evacuation there probably won’t be anyone stopping us.”

 

He strode into the room. Lines of beige lockers lined the walls. The harsh red light of a glowing exit sign was subsumed into the pulsing lights of the alarms. The door beneath it was solid black with a small keypad next to it. Next to it stood an old wooden coat hanger and a water cooler.

 

_icantcantcantcant_

 

“Uh, kid? You’re kinda losing all coherency.” Alcor walked down the room and grabbed a sweater from the coat rack and slid it onto the body. It was much too large, with its bottom reaching to brush the body’s knees. “Are you alright? Is... is this traumatic? This is probably a traumatic experience isn’t it. Um...”

 

Something was crashing down the hall behind them. It, or possibly something near it, was shouting, although what it was saying couldn’t be parsed over the alarms and distance.

 

“Well I guess that answers whether or not anyone is going to try and stop us.” He stopped, looking back at the door he had entered. “You’re really not going to be good with me just blasting through them, are you? Assuming I even can right now without frying this body outright.”

 

“Guess we’re doing this the hard way,” he said, spinning around and slamming a hand onto the emergency release button. This presumably set off another alarm, but there was really no way to tell anymore.

 

The door clicked, and easily pushed open, releasing the demon and child outside.

 

It was dark, or at least significantly darker than the well-lit corridors of the facility had been. The dry, chilly air stung the lungs and sweaty skin of the body.

 

The building behind them looked fairly insignificant: one story tall, grey cinder blocks that could be centuries old, and windows covered from the inside. It looked disused; the parking lot that they were standing in was cracked and filled with weeds. Small trees encroached on the edges of the lot, becoming a dense wall just beyond it.

 

There was a large amount of commotion around the corner. Alcor ran from it, sprinting into the woods. As he reached the edge of the lot, the door behind them opened. A tall humanoid was silhouetted in the bright doorway. By their side hovered two small drones. Alcor couldn’t make anything else out before plowing through the mass of thick foliage.

 

Thin branches whipped at the body, catching on the rough knit fabric of the sweater. Undergrowth pulled on the legs, scratching the body’s bare feet, pulling him back, slowing him down.

 

This offense would not be tolerated.

 

Twin cyan jets of fire shot off in front of him and behind him. They were, disappointingly, much less intense than the one used to blast open the first door, held back by the pleading ache of the body’s chest. They were still plenty intense enough to level a line through the foolishly unwarded forest, leaving the remaining larger trees charred and bare of surrounding foliage and low branches. Hopefully it would also be enough to do something about the robots behind him.

 

Alcor charged down the convenient path, blocking of the area around the entrance with fire that would only burn animals, keeping an eye on the sides for something less horribly exposed.

 

He ignored the yelling behind him. There was nothing that they could do to harm _him_ , and they would have to be exceptionally dumb to do anything too drastic, anything that would further provoke his wrath.

 

Then again, they just summoned the most powerful demon there was, apparently just to do something that would explicitly anger him, despite the numerous bloody historical incidents that clearly illustrated how he responded to such things.

 

He shoved away the fear that was trying to worm through him. It was not his; he didn’t fear anything anymore. It was the racing heart of the body, the adrenaline that flooded the system. It was the hysteria of the child (t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶b̶a̶b̶l̶y̶ ̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶f̶a̶u̶l̶t̶) and he wasn’t going to let such a stupid and pointless feeling have any power over him.

 

There was a small opening on his left. Just the size for a child squeeze through, a narrow path of hard dirt going perpendicular to the trail he had blazed. It would suffice. It would have to.

 

Looking back to make sure that there wasn’t anyone on his tail yet, he backtracked a handful of long strides before turning away from the trail and sending another line of fire down into the night. He left the opening burning, and slipped down the small path. It wasn’t the most subtle red herring in the world. He wasn’t sure he could trust these insolent morons to catch anything less.

 

It was slower moving through the winding trail in the living wood, but overall a small price to pay for cover. The sweater he had stolen was a red-tinged brown, which worked well with the body’s rich brown skin and smooth black hair for fitting in with the early autumn foliage. The beige pants were less serendipitous but ultimately weren’t terrible and were half covered by the sweater anyway. He was probably fine, for the moment.

 

He had absolutely no idea where he was. He had absolutely no idea where he would go even if he did.

 

He had absolutely no idea what was going on with his pursuers either, or for that matter if he was actually being pursued. It seemed unlikely that they wouldn’t give chase, but he wasn’t going to pretend he understood what it was that these summoners were actually trying to accomplish.

 

He couldn’t hear anything over the gasping breaths and pounding heart of the body.

 

He needed a better strategy than simply running.

 

There was a spruce tree through a short patch of thick undergrowth, with tightly clustered branches that started low with thick needles that obscured the trunk.

 

It would do. It would have to.

 

Everything protested the climb. The arms were determined to convince him they couldn’t pull the rest of the body up. The feet, which were fairly raw from just getting here, cried out on each step. The back didn’t like being hunched and twisted in the narrow space. Sap covered the palms and made them tacky, which the body didn’t seem to care about despite how disgusting it was.

 

He climbed until the branches started thinning and sat on two adjacent branches, leaning on the trunk. The body felt so heavy, like all its limbs were weights, like even sitting up would be a massive feat.

 

He could see the path he had cleared. The winding trail hadn’t actually taken him that far from it, although it did make it so that the shortest path between him and it had a thick bramble of raspberry bushes rendering it largely unnavigable.

 

The clearing lit up in a bright flash as someone set up an omnidirectional spotlight. As the spots cleared from Alcor’s vision, and how eyes that couldn’t function in the dark would become temporarily _worse_ when exposed to light he couldn’t fathom, he could make out four humanoids, three of them in uniforms and one in a slightly more casual professional outfit. They hadn’t yet reached the fork he’d made, but had definitely noticed the second lingering fire. The odd one out was talking rapidly at the others, gesturing quickly and walking quickly, almost pacing around the others. The uniformed people were moving relatively slowly, sweeping the edges of the woods with bright flashlights. One reached the second fire, purposefully moving an instrument around it.

 

“You doing any better, kid?” Alcor asked, quietly.

 

_…_

 

“Right, right.” He scratched the body’s neck. “So... do you have a name? I’m Alcor.”

 

_._

_._

_._

 

_charlie_

 

“Charlie huh? Good name, that.” A deep breath was taken. ”So, now that the imminent danger seems to be relatively low, do you want to see if it’s actually possible for me to release control of your body?”

 

_!yes!_

 

“I’m just going to try and ease out then. Unless I’m vastly misjudging whats going on here I don’t think I’ll be able to actually leave, but I think I can at least take a back seat. Be ready to take over and try not to fall out of the tree.”

 

_okay lets do itgetoutgetout_

 

Alcor closed the body’s eyes and relaxed, letting the heavy limbs hang down and sink into the bark, taking deep, slow, breaths. Floating up, into the dreamscape around him.

 

Everything jolted. Charlie sat upright and rigid, gripping the branches beneath zir tightly with zir legs, zir arms wrapped around zirself.

 

Fear flooded the system again.

 

**What’s wrong now?**

 

Alcor pushed himself into Charlie’s awareness.

 

“I can’t climb!” Charlie frantically whispered, looking down, past all the branches (how were there so many branches?) at the ground, which was much farther away than it had seemed when ze was simply floating numbly, watching through eyes ze couldn’t direct. “I’m gonna fall. I’m gonna die.”

 

**Well, it’s a good thing we don’t need you climb anywhere then. All you gotta do is sit there for now, okay? Pretty sure you can manage just sitting in a tree.**

 

**Also, you should be able to just think at me, I’m in your mind after all so you really don’t need to make any noise and risk someone noticing us.**

 

_oh, so like this then?_

 

**Yep. Just like that.**

 

_wait you’re in my brain?_

 

**I was just in your body, why is this a surprise? And technically I’m in your dreamscape - the brain's just a lump of meat. Not much room there for anything else.**

 

_why does everything hurt?_

 

**Probably because I was channeling far more energy than a human body can actually withstand before I realized that you were still alive.**

 

_‘mnot human_

 

**Huh.**

**That should have been pretty obvious. Being binded to you is limiting my knowledge for some reason, and being in your body feels like what I remember being in a human one being like.**

**What are you, anyway?**

 

_what are you?_

 

**I’m a being of pure energy.**

 

_._

_._

_._

_so_

_do you actually have a plan?_

_i don’t think that hiding in a tree forever is really how I want to spend my life._

 

**Of course there’s a plan.**

**Figure out what they did to bind me to you and fix it.**

 

_So no then._

 

**It’s a plan. You didn’t ask if I had a rigorous plan.**

 

“This is all we can!” Came a voice from the clearing. “We’re horrendously understaffed, which was your idea I remind you, and half our equipment isn’t even accessible because of the damn evacuation!”

 

One of the uniformed people was shouting at the casually dressed person. The other two appeared to be trying to keep doing their jobs, one hacking down the undergrowth around the fire while the other investigated the woods on the other end of the clearing, getting worryingly close to the actual place that Alcor had gone.

 

“We can’t afford to lose another one!” Came the retorted, “Especially not _this_ one. Recovery needs to be our highest priority!”

 

**Another one‽**

 

“We can’t afford to lose any of our own! We aren’t dealing with a damn runaway here: as you have been so keen to point out, we just let loose a monster.”

 

**How have I missed this?**

 

Casual pressed their hands into their eyes momentarily, and then responded calmly, too quiet to make out.

 

“Damage the subj… You know, I don’t think he gives a shit!”

 

Casual remained calm, and whatever they said seemed to diffuse the situation enough that eavesdropping became impossible once more, although the two still appeared to be at each other's throats.

 

The one who had been cutting a way to the decoy path got the attention of the fighters, who quickly rushed over.

 

A large jet of cyan briefly flashed far down the false path, dissipating high above the trees. All four of the people forced their way around the fire and down the path.

 

**That…**

**wasn’t me.**

 

_is it just me or have there been a lot of suspiciously useful things happening?_

 

**I wasn’t going to say anything but yeah, there really have been. I was thinking earlier that someone was just taking advantage of the fact that everyone was distracted with whatever they were trying to do with us, but that was weirdly personalized.**

**At the very least, someone knows an awful lot about what’s going on. Could be an inside job, if there are others I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some staff that found this to be the last straw.**

 

_do you hear something?_

 

**Not really, these ears are awful. I don’t know how so many people can function with this limited of senses.**

 

_seriously shut up I think there’s something out there_

 

With a bit of focus it became apparent to both of them that there was definitely something moving through the woods. Leaves crackled and undergrowth shook as something pushed past them. It sounded too big for the path.

 

There was also the low murmur of voices.

 

It was too dark to see anything, and almost impossible to see anything on the ground nearby anyway due to numerous branches.

 

“I’m not casting any doubt on your abilities,” came a rather loud whisper, “I am merely concerned about the continually reducing distance between ourselves and the fallen sickle tree.”

 

“Well worry no more,” came a different voice, one that sounded very close, “we’re here.”

 

“Are you trying to tell me that we went through all this past night’s trials for the wondrous privilege of promenading to a random spot in the woods, one that by all measures appears completely indistinguishable from any other spot?”

 

“Apparently.”

 

“I amend my earlier statement; I am very much casting doubt on your abilities. Are you sure you actually know what you are doing?”

 

“What kinda question is that? Have I ever once in my life done a single thing to give you the misimpression that I have even one clue what the hell I’m doing?”

 

“I suppose the fault lies in my hands for making such a brazen assumption that the statement ‘Naw, trust me on this one I know what’s up’ could possibly imply some degree of confidence.”

 

“As long as we got that sorted.”

 

“In all seriousness though, we really don’t have that much time. If you could have some brilliant flash of insight as to the precise nature of why we are here of all places I would highly appreciate it.”

 

“Maybe we’re just boned no matter what we do and it’s just a really good time to appreciate some trees.”

 

“Once again, your astounding insights continue to…”

 

“Uh, Earth to Renee? Don’t tell me that you became too overwhelmed by the majesty of nature to fulfill your sworn duties of local snarker.”

 

“There is something deeply wrong with that tree’s aura.”

 

**Fuck.**

 

“Trees have auras?”

 

“In my experience? No. Although I cannot say I would be at all surprised to learn that in their hubris they produced such a thing. It could be some sort of dryad situation too, I suppose.”

 

“Illicit tree experimentation obviously makes way more sense then say, I don’t know, someone climbing a tree. Anyway, we don’t have time for this bullshit.” They raised their voice to a more normal level and said, “Hey! Is anyone up there?”

 

**Seems we’re busted then. They don’t really sound like they’re a part of whatever was going on earlier though. Could be our mysterious helpers, or perhaps working with them would be more likely considering how little the seem to know.**

 

_what am i supposed to do here they know where we are_

 

**Well, we could respond, see if we can figure out what their intentions are, or I could blast them and hope that’s enough to get them to leave.**

 

_…_

 

**Charlie?**

 

_. . ._

 

**Charlie you need to make a decision.**

 

_i don’t know!_

_what if they’re with the weird doctors and they were just trying to sound like they weren't or what if there something ever worse i'm stuck here i just want to be home_

 

**My offer to try and kill them still stands**

 

_i don’t want to kill anyone!_

 

“Welp, no response. Guess you were right, totally is an illicit arboreal affront against nature.”

 

“Obviously. Why else would anyone, especially in this area, not respond to random people shouting in the woods.” Renee said. “Anyway let’s just do this the easy way.”

 

“Going to shed some light on this mystertree?”

 

“I could leave right now you know.” Renee said, as a small light appeared at the base of the tree.

 

Through the branches Charlie could vaguely make out both figures at the base of the tree. One of them, presumably Renee, had the small light cupped in their hands. They had dark, blotchy skin and seemed to be relatively humanoid. The other figure was a brown avian wearing a shiny red skirt, swaying back and forth between their legs.

 

The light started to move up the tree.

 

“No you couldn't. I’m the closest thing you have to a friend,” said the avian.

 

“That is probably the most depressing fact I’ve ever been told.” Renee said. “Now shut up, I need to concentrate.”

 

_you wouldn’t be able to like, get rid of that, could you?_

 

**I probably could, but then what? They’re still going to be there.**

 

_maybe if we wait long enough they’ll give up and leave us alone? One of them did say they don't have much time…_

 

**You know, I kinda doubt that their reactions to running out of time will be to shrug and walk away. They came here with a purpose, and considering I’m not getting the impression they want to be here, I doubt that they are going to leave until they complete it.**

 

_well if they don’t even know why they're here maybe -_

 

**Oh, hey. Looks like you’re out of time.**

 

The light drifted through the branches that Charlie was sitting on, settling to a stop around chest level. It was soft, not quite reaching the ends of the branches, and felt warm despite casting no heat.

 

Alcor Felt someone watching.

 

“Okay, I see someone, looks like they're just a kid,” Renee said before raising her voice a little, “Are you alright up there? We don’t - wait, _Charlie_?”

 

**You know this person?**

 

_the voice is kinda famili-_

 

“Wait,” Charlie said, “you’re THAT Renee? I thought you were dead!”

 

“Oh, is that what they told everyone?” she said.

 

“I think they actually said that you had cancer or something? I don’t remember too well, you just never came back and then some kids started saying that you died.”

 

“They just told me I had a dentist appointment,” she said. “Although I suppose that excuse would presumably have to be altered to explain my indefinite absence to anyone else. What are you doing here?”

 

“Just uh, sittin in a tree I guess.”

 

“Am I supposed to know who this kid is?” the avian asked.

 

“I wouldn’t think so. Charlie and I lived in the same foster home before I was taken to the forbidden idiocracy.” She paused. “I suppose I should make sure everyone’s on the same page here, Charlie, he’s Vin, he sure is a person who exists, and Vin, zir Charlie, I would say something about zir but I haven’t seen zir in years and we weren’t even that close back then.”

 

“Great, now that we’re all introduced and junk why doesn’t Charlie come on down so we can get as far away from here as possible?”

 

“I can’t,” Charlie said sheepishly.

 

“Well that could be a problem,” Renee said. “Are you hurt?”

 

“No, well a bit actually, but that’s not the problem.” Charlie clenched zir hands. “I can’t climb. I don’t know how to get down.”

 

**Seriously kid? This tree is practically a ladder.**

 

_i’m not great with ladders either and i’m not the one who got us stuck here so you can shut it_

 

**How is this your idea of being stuck when you just spent who knows how long locked in a room and sedated?**

 

“How the fuck did you get up there if you can’t climb?” Vin asked.

 

“I don’t know,” Charlie said.

 

“Okay I really hate to be that guy but you need to not know your way down pretty quick cause we don’t have that long till the drones reactivate.” Vin said. “And I sure as hell don’t have the arm strength and general physiology to get up there and help.”

 

“I would offer some assistance,” Renee said, “but I find it highly dubious that the branches could support my weight, even assuming I could get up at all. If the advice of someone with very little experience with trees means anything, I would advise you to try taking a few deep breaths while focusing on one branch at a time.”

 

**Okay this is absurd you want me to just take over and-**

 

_ＮＯ_

 

**alright, fine. Let’s try something else.**

 

Alcor thought very hard about pinching the nose he didn’t have and sighed. Even with all the limitations of his current predicament it should still be relatively trivial to just push a little and…

 

**Alright you should be able to see me now, right?**

 

_you’re a star?_

 

**I’m a… okay yeah apparently I’m a star that’s a thing sometimes.**

**Anyway.**

**Seeing how you refuse to do this the easy way, I’m going to tell you exactly what you need to do, okay? All you gotta do is listen to what I say and you’ll be fine.**

 

_…_

 

**Just, take your left hand and grab this branch alright? Don’t even need to move the rest of you, just that one arm.**

 

“Okay,” Charlie called down, “I’m going to try getting down. I don’t suppose one of you would be able to catch me if I fall or anything?”

 

“You’re joking right?” Vin said. “I got hollow bones, I’d die. Also I can’t see shit right now.”

 

**Look if you start to fall I will just take over - very briefly - and grab a damn branch. This isn’t hard. I have seriously encountered staircases more perilous than this fucking tree.**

 

_could you possibly go one minute without yelling at me? i’m trying okay._

 

**Fine. No yelling. Just gentle guidance. To this branch. That I would really appreciate if you could please grab in a timely manner so we both don’t end up back in a situation far worse than being twenty feet off the ground.**

 

Charlie looked at the branch. It was pretty close. Ze wouldn’t even have to move much. Ze could do this. Ze lifted zir arm and grabbed the branch in a deathgrip. The branches beneath zir were stable. Ze could do this.

 

**Great! Look at you, holding a branch. Now, keeping your hands where they are, go and put your left foot on this one right here okay?**

 

The indicated branch was low. Not that much lower, really, but beneath zir. Backdropped by the unignorable distance to the ground. Charlie gingerly reached with zir leg, edging it out from under zir, reaching for the branch.

 

The branch Charlie was sitting on dipped from zir movement. It was slight, it could be nothing, but it was probably the first sign that it was going to break and ze was going to fall and break all zir bones and die. 

 

Ze couldn't do this.

 

**Charlie.**

**Charlie look at me. You're doing fine. The tree is fine. Just, calm down okay? Breathe. You have to move.**

 

Charlie did have to admit that he was right in that the tree did seem to be fine and not dropping zir to zir death. Tentatively the foot reached out again, bracing against the lower branch.

 

**That’s it now just shift your weight to the other side, mkay? Yeah just like that. See you didn’t even need me to tell you to grab that with your other hand. Although you might want to crouch a bit, standing isn’t very stable. Let your arms go over your head it’s fine.**

 

Slowly Alcor coaxed Charlie down. The light floated down with zir. Zir feet hurt. Zir everything hurt. Everything was awful and Charlie would hate it if it weren’t for the fact that hating everything seemed like it would take too much effort. Maybe falling wouldn’t be that terrible. Except then ze would break something and everything would somehow hurt more.

 

Today was bullshit and needed to stop.

 

Everything was bullshit and needed to stop.

 

This tree kept scratching zir and needed to be burned to the ground.

 

The ground that, while we’re on the topic, needed to just be here already. Instead of.

 

Huh. The ground was actually pretty close.

 

**And would you look at that, we’re practically done.**

 

“You want a hand with that last step there?” Renee asked.

 

Within the soft glow of the light she could clearly be seen now. She looked about how Charlie remembered, albeit bigger now. Shiny black scales broken up with dark purple blotches that glistened in the light. Her fin (a somewhat rare feature in naga, Charlie recalled) was lighter and somewhat transparent, running down both sides of her body: one end starting at the top of her head, the other ending on her side before the navel. The external gills on the right side of her face were severed. Charlie had forgotten about that. She was wearing an old, ratty hoodie colorfully sporting the logo of some football team that Charlie had never heard of.

 

“I would like that, yeah,” Charlie said. “I don’t really want to drop; my feet hurt a lot.”

 

“I would imagine so. They look awful.” She slid up to the base of the tree, bracing against it to pull herself up. “Are you going to be alright?”

 

“Am I going to be alright?” Charlie repeated.

 

Everything hurt. Ze didn’t know where ze was. Ze had no idea how long ago anything had happened, or what happened or why or really anything. Everything hurt _so much_. There was someone else in zir head and he could probably take control of zir body whenever he wanted and. Was ze okay?

 

Charlie was laughing. Choking. Shaking a bit. Was ze going to be alright?

 

“Hey,” Renee said. She was right next to zir, body pushed against the tree with an arm wrapped around the trunk. “Charlie. Can you grab onto me?”

 

She slowly brought her other arm around zir back. Charlie leaned in, catching zir breath and clutching her tightly as she gently lowered them both down.

 

“I don’t know if I can walk for long,” Charlie said, quiet. A bit hoarse. “I’m sorry.”

 

“It’s fine.” She set zir down. “You’ve had a very hard night, and I can’t imagine that things have been that great before now either. How long were you in the fasted Italy anyway?”

 

“The what?”

 

“Right. I,” she rubbed at her neck. “I’m sorry, it’s been some time since I’ve been able to converse with someone lacking familiarity with my personal lexicon. When discussing the institution from which you just escaped we used to call it the facility, for lack of any manner of official title. At some point one of us made a typo initializing a rapid spiral to an absurd cycle of ever escalating nomenclatural abstraction. I could make an effort to simply call it the facility again if that would be useful to you.”

 

“Oh. No, I think it’s fine, now that there’s context?” Charlie said. “I don’t actually know how long I was there. I was sleeping for most of it, I think. Do you know what day it is?”

 

“It’s the 26th of September, I believe,” Renee said.

  
“Okay, so I guess it’s been about a week then?”

 

“Wait are you serious?” Vin said. He was about Charlie’s height, with reddish brown feathers, a large scar across his forehead and a slightly poofed crest. “We’ve been planning this shit for literal years and you just fucking stumble out after a week? That you slept through?”

 

“Considering what ze was capable of doing after just a week it’s almost certainly for the best. I highly doubt that their end goal was confined to the generation of magical fire, absurd intensity aside. It simply doesn’t fit with anything else we’ve seen from them.” She signed. “Regardless, we should depart. Charlie, since you’re hurt, how would you feel about the possibility of riding on my back for awhile? I should be able to handle your weight temporarily.”

 

“That would be great, if you’re okay with it.” Charlie said.

 

“You’ve never offered to let me ride on your back,” Vin commented, as Charlie carefully slipped over Renee’s fin.

 

“You’ve never ran around the woods barefoot until your feet are bloody after casting excessive amounts of energy for what I’m assuming is one of the first times. _I’m_ exhausted after everything we’ve done tonight, and I’m used to this. Anyway, zir like twelve.”

 

“I’m almost fourteen.” Charlie objected, hugging Renee’s smooth torso.

 

“Really?” She asked, “I recalled our age gap being greater than that. I suppose a couple years feels more significant when you have lived through less of them.”

 

**Now would be a fantastic time to try and get more information. They mentioned the drones were disabled? It would be great to know how they did that.**

 

“Um,” Charlie said, “not that I’m not really greatful and all, but how are you guys even here? Or, why, more like, considering that you left already and didn’t actually know what was going on with me.”

 

“Seemed like a good idea,” said Vin.

 

“The short answer is that in our years at the faulty cist there were various things done to us that resulted in the unnatural manifestation of various magical abilities.” Renee said, “-”

 

“No, that’s definitely the long answer.” Vin interrupted. “The short answer is that I thought it was a good idea. The short answer Additional Context Bonus Edition™ is that I thought it was a good idea and I have a goddamn incredible intuition, because fuck me is why.”

 

“He possesses an artificially induced form of Sight that, among other things, manifests passively through an intuitive understanding of potentially beneficial actions to take in seemingly any circumstance.” She clarified.

 

“I made a bomb out of random junk, miscellaneous trivia about early transcendental weaponry, and guesswork!”

 

“He got the idea it would be a good idea to mount a small attack today, but an infuriating lack of why.” She said, pushing thin branches out of her way. “He had already made the bomb at that point. I can’t genuinely say I think he was actually waiting for any sort of phenomenal premonition to do it.”

 

“So then,” Charlie said, “You guys were acting today because you knew the drones would be down?”

 

“Oh no,” Renee smirked. “That was me. See I currently possess the ability to create extraordinary illusions, a skill that has been critical to the success of our escape. You might have personally witnessed this earlier if you noticed the false flame that I used as part of a distraction for the remnants of the security team. It’s also why I’m largely unconcerned about this light - I can just cut off its ability to be perceived outside of the area that we need it in.

Unfortunately for us, however, illusions, or at least my illusions, can only affect cognisant entities, which makes them effectively useless once a computer gets involved. Although theoretically there’s no reason a sufficiently advanced AI wouldn’t be able to perceive them. Anyway, considering the fact that most of the security systems here, well most places really, are largely controlled by AIs this becomes a seemingly insurmountable obstacle, and it would be were it not for the fact that paranoia over the possibility of hackers and viruses is presently quite high and almost any institution that has anything serious to lose in the event that their drones go haywire also has a monitoring station, operated by a traditionally cognisant entity, so that the whole system can be shut down in case of an emergency.

This job is horrendously tedious and in general the operators are paying so little attention that even if something did go wrong they would, ironically, only notice if they had their attention drawn to it by one of numerous automated systems. Fortunately for us, _someone_ went and set off a bomb, causing everything to go onto high alert, and ensuring that someone was actually monitoring drone behavior. This enabled me to create an illusion over the readings that the operator was receiving to make it seem that someone had hacked the system and was controlling the drones for their own purposes, forcing them to do a full system reset.”

 

“This is why you never ask her to explain anything.” Vin said, jumping purposefully through a series of crunchy leaves. “You could have just said ‘I brainfucked some IT guy’ but nooooo, you gotta explain why that suspect burrito you had for breakfast was actually necessary to save some rare arctic owls from extinction.”

 

“Wow.” Charlie said. “You thought of everything! That’s amazing.”

 

“Well,” Renee put a hand to her cheek, “I would like to think that I would be capable of manifesting some rather extraordinary feats after years of careful planning and practice. And extensive research carefully spaced to reduce suspicion. And continuous monitoring of the behavior of someone who is too bored to actually do any monitoring themself. ”

 

“Wait how did you watch the inside of the monitoring station?” Charlie asked. “I’m guessing they didn’t let you in there.”

 

“She got magic vision too, but where I can see futurely she can see distantly.” Vin said quickly.

 

“That is a massive oversimplification.” Renee said. “This is slander. Slander on my good name of someone with clearly understood abilities and limitations. You monster.”

 

“Look I think we can all live with an approximate knowledge of what’s going on here and now without getting into paranoid ramblings.”

 

“They are not paranoid ramblings,” Renee corrected, “they are perfectly reasonable theories considering the constraints of our knowledge.”

 

“I think in order to count as an actual theory you kinda need to have some unconstrained knowledge.” He kicked a rock. watching detachedly as it bounced and tumbled down the growing slope to the side of the path.

 

“Our whole lives are knowledge!” Renee thrust her arms forward in a wide gesture. “To say that because no one ever specifically monologued their intent at us we’re completely blind to any greater picture is to erroneously discount both of our whole experiences as irrelevant and meaningless.”

 

“Whatever you say.”

 

“I’ll never understand how you can possibly be so apathetic to the reasons behind the forces governing your life.” She absently snapped a branch off a small tree as she passed it, peeling the smooth bark off in long strips.

 

“It’s not like any amount of theorizing ever made them stop.”

 

“That’s so incredibly shortsighted.” Renee said. “How do you expect to stay out if you have no indication on how they might act?”

 

“I dunno, the same damn magic I used to get out in the first place?” Vin sighed. “Look I ain’t saying you gotta stop or anything. I would never want to cut you off from such a source of pure unadulterated joy as conspiracy theories. That be fucking unconscionable. Instant nomination to the worst friend ever award right there. I’m just saying that sometimes it can all be a bit much is all.”

 

“You are aware that I’m not doing this for enjoyment, right?”

 

“I think I might be interested in some perfectly reasonably paranoid rambling,” Charlie said, slumped into Renee’s back. “But maybe not right now? I’m really tired.”

 

“I suppose I could somehow manage to hold back the full force of the typhoon of my indiscriminately plausible theorization momentarily.” Renee said, tossing the naked branch, “just know that the longer you hold it off the more the pressure will build, the more fearsome and inescapable this storm shall be. You seal your own fate.”

 

“Where are we going, anyway?” Charlie asked.

 

“Oh, we found this wonderful place.” Vin’s wings flapped, “It’s roomy, got open living space, real granite floors, natural lighting, minimalistic decor and a fantastic view of the woods.”

 

“It’s a cave.” Renee injected helpfully.

 

“It’s a cave _system_ and it’s _amazing_.” Vin said. “And it’s right next this great joint full of cool shit you can just take.”

 

“That would be the abandoned landfill,” she clarified.

 

“More like the awesome landful,” he spread his fingers widely. “Everything theres’s in like, perfect condition.”

 

“That’s presumably because it’s older than the popularization of biodegradable plastics so everything just sits there failing to rot.”

 

“Weird trash cave sounds a whole lot better then sleeping in a tree,” Charlie said. “And while we’re still in the neighborhood of questionable plausible speculation, there is one potential problem that I’m kinda confused about, and I think it should probably have come up by now? They still have my skin.”

 

**Oh, you’re a selkie.**

**That’s actually important you know. You really should have mentioned earlier.**

 

“I would imagine the most probable reasons it hasn’t come up” Renee said, ”would be that either they left it behind it behind in the evacuation, in which case it’s probably going to become an issue soon, or that whatever they did to you affected the coat’s hold. I’m not entirely sure how the whole coat binding thing works in the first place so it’s hard for me to speculate with confidence. Either way, there isn’t really anything we can do about it now so just, try not to dissolve into seafoam in the meantime.”

 

“The seafoam things a myth.”

 

“Well that’s good. I would hate this long-belated reunion to be sullied by an untimely demise.”

 

“No, the death things real. We just leave behind a normal corpse is all.”

 

“Oh.” Renee went quiet.

 

**Don’t worry kiddo, that coat’s connected to me too now.**

**And I wont let anyone do á͚̗̙̻̘ń͈͔y̳t͎͓͠h̫̤̰̘ͅi̺̙̣̞͡n̷̬͈g͍̰̜̘̝̩ to it**


	2. Chapter 2

Charlie was tightly curled up in a cocoon of an old weighted blanket; it wasn’t terribly warm but at least the dense plastic filling wasn’t molding. Imprints were slowly forming where ze pushed zir face into one of the beady lumps. The pressure was nice, solid and real when nothing else could be. Zir breathing was harsh and irregular.

 

“So.” Vin was chest deep within a bean bag chair. “You’re having a field day with this, huh?”

 

“Pardon?” Renee asked, looking up from the sweater she had been inspecting for holes.

 

“Another kid from the same place they nabbed you from? There’s gotta be some deep and convoluted plot here, right? A proper scheme.”

 

“Not really.” She shrugged, resuming her sweater scrutinization. “It fits well into what I already suspected. Admittedly it is a little surprising for them to take a second child from the same locale so soon; I would think that such a tactic would attract more notice than they would want.”

 

“Why would they care if it’s somewhat obvious?” Vin asked. “Even if someone was paying attention - and really why would they - who the hell’s gonna care about someone on the net accusing the Taskies of kidnapping poor preter kids?”

 

“And I’m the one with the bleak worldview.”

 

“I’ve never said that the world ain’t shit.” He leaned forward, resting his neck on the bulging pleather seat. “You’re just the one that chooses to spend all your time immersing yourself in the marinade of misery that is the specifics.”

 

“You cannot dismantle a system if you don’t understand the specifics of how it operates.” Renee set her garment down and looked Vin in the eyes.

 

“Renee, you’re a teenage eel fugitive. You cannot dismantle shit, regardless of what you understand.”

 

She crossed her arms. “I don’t mean to say anything too revolutionary, but there is a high probability that I am going to metamorphosize into an adult someday.”

 

Vin laughed. “Bullshit. Everything you say is meant to be revolutionary. You talk like your words are gonna rise up as soldiers.”

 

“You can’t convince people to join your cause with silence.”

 

“You can’t convince people to join you if any attempt to communicate will get you reabducted either.”

 

“You know,” she fanned her fingers, “there is this strange mystical technique called ‘physical contact’ you can use to talk to people without everything being recorded, right?”

 

“Right,” Vin crossed his arms under his neck. “Cause we’re totally going to just run into some sympathetic rando in the woods who either doesn’t have a screen on them or’s like, hacked that shit into not autoreporting A-class freaks from half a mile away.”

 

“Hey,” she smiled, “I managed to convince you, didn’t I? Even with our conspiracy being formed within the sites of our captors.”

 

“You didn’t convince me of shit.” His wings flapped and came to rest cupped around the beanbag. “This has all been purely out of self-interest.”

 

Renee cocked an eyebrow. “Are you implying that no one else would have something to gain from obtaining liberation from an oppressive state?”

 

“Most people got something to lose when things go wrong.” He shrugged his wing shoulders. “It’s not saying much that you recruited someone who had literally nowhere to go but up.”

 

“I hardly see how your interests were furthered by saving a kid.”

 

He shrugged again. “I was kinda assuming that the interests of the vague and ominous force that govern my vision aligned more directly with my own, honestly.”

 

“If you could have known ahead of time,” Renee spoke slowly, “that we would ‘just’ be saving someone else, would you still have done it?”

 

“Hey, we still don’t know that this is ‘just’ saving zir.” Vin pulled his elbows towards his chest and raised his head. “Not that I would have a problem with that if it is, it’s just… it easily could be that zir weird fire shit or whatever is going to be goddamn critical in the future. Like, what if we were to run into like, a whole fuckton of marshmallows or some shit. Just piled in the woods like you do. I don’t know about you, but I sure as fuck can’t just swivel sticks until they explode. I’d be end of the goddamn line there if we didn’t have Mx. Burny McFlamesflames over there.”

 

“How many causal links ahead do you think your foresight is able to connect?”

 

“How the fuck would I know that?” He pressed his head back into the bed. “You’ve literally seen it at work just as much as I have.”

 

“I’m not personally experiencing it as a psychological effect.” Renee crossed her arms.

 

“I don’t see what that has to do with anything. We’ll probably never know what the fuck my deal is. But speaking of deals, what do you think Charlie’s is?”

 

“Oh,” she said, “ze’s possessed.”

 

“Seriously?” He looked over at Charlie. “That fucking blows.”

 

“Can’t say I would know, but from what little I have seen I am rather inclined to lean towards the the conclusion that the blow factor of it is rather high.”

 

“So what,” Vin settled back into the bed, “you think they just went and shoved a pyrogeist in a kid? What would that even do?”

 

“I think I’m going to pass along the spotlight for that one,” she turned to Charlie, “considering they presumably have a significantly better idea of the full extent of the answer than I do.”

 

“You figured that out quick.” Alcor pushed the body into a sitting position. “What gave it away?”

 

“There have been numerous minor indications throughout the past hours leading me to suspect such a thing, but it became pretty undeniable a few minutes ago when you began to do what I can only presume was pretending to sleep.” She shifted her gaze. “There’s also the fact that most people’s auras don’t drastically change when they fall asleep, but honestly that was a considerably less significant factor.”

 

“There’s no way it was that bad,” Alcor said with an eyeroll.

 

“I can confidently say that, even after all my years of being surrounded by children, that was the worst attempt at faking sleep I have ever witnessed.” She crossed her arms. “The only way I could imagine that fooling anyone is if they, purely hypothetically, spent all their life locked in a room, physically isolated from any other person and had never witnessed what a sleeping person actually looked like.”

 

“In my defense,” said Vin, “I really don’t care.”

 

“My point is,” Renee continued, “if it weren’t for the fact that I was fairly confident about your existence I would have thought that Charlie had some sort of bizarre sleep apnea and would have been incredibly worried. Do you have any idea how lungs are actually supposed to work?”

 

“It’s been awhile since I had any of my own, alright? And it would have been fine but trying to do nothing is really boring and apparently just thinking about breathing is enough to make the body decide that you should be in charge of it.” Alcor crossed Charlie's legs. “Couldn’t you already see my aura though? I thought that was how you found us in the first place.”

 

“Your aura was considerably more subtle when Charlie was in control. It’s like a fire; when Charlie is awake it’s like smoldering coals, noticeable when searched for but easily overlooked. With zir asleep it’s more like half the woods is on fire; unignorable in its intensity but seemingly sourceless in its prevalence.”

 

“That could be a problem if they’re still looking for us. Normally I can hide it but whatever they did to bind me here has limited what I can do.”

 

“I suspect that it is nowhere near as dominating from a distance. I wasn’t overwhelmed by it last night, despite the fact you were presumably in control for at least part of it. This is not to say we shouldn’t test this theory, but I suspect it is not going to pose a problem while the flailing seal is still busy and short-staffed. At the moment I have more pressing concerns, and you’re at the center of most of them.”

 

“What about me could possibly be cause for concern?”

 

The look Renee shot him made it quite clear that such a comment was completely unworthy of verbal recognition.

 

“Who are you?” She asked.

 

“You can call me Tyrone.” He leaned forward, setting Charlie’s elbows on zir kneecaps, grinning.

 

“That’s not really an answer.” Her glare could ignite potassium.

 

“You’re not really wrong.” Alcor said, with a grin so smug it might start monologuing.

 

“What pronouns do you use?” Her glare dissolved, requiring far more fucks to maintain then she could bring her herself to give.

 

“I haven’t been terribly attached to any set in quite awhile,” he said, “but traditionally go with he/him/his.”

 

“Charlie is scared of you.”

 

“Ze should be. I’m killing zir.”

 

“Why?”

 

“I don’t exactly have a choice.” He grimaced. “You weren’t quite right when you identified this as possession - it’s more complicated than that. I’m not just bound to Charlie and unable leave, they cut me off from my presence in the mindscape. I absorb energy from local mindscape around me, which normally I can just channel back to maintain a physical presence or just store for later. But now I have no way to channel that energy without going through Charlie; either physically which is hard on zir body or through zir dreamscape which would shatter it. There hasn’t been a large enough buildup to be a problem yet but it’s only a matter of time.”

 

“So if I’m understanding what you’re saying,” she crossed her arms, “you are in a similar unfortunate position as the rest of us and don’t mean any harm to Charlie?”

 

“That about sums it up.”

 

“So stop being an asshole!” She shouted, lifting more of her torso higher off the ground. “This situation is already hard enough on everyone without you aggravating things! You are, quite literally, in the same boat as zir; I’m positive you can find some way of communicating the dangers of your presence without instilling fear in someone who can’t escape it!”

 

Alcor flinched back from her outburst, blinking. With narrowed eyes and clenched teeth and fists he stood, as intimidating as Charlie’s five feet of height allowed.

 

“Excuse me?” he snarled. “I’m doing everything I can to keep this kid alive! I’m even letting zir front, which is, let me tell you, incredibly boring and frustrating. If I was being an ass I could just say screw the consequences and leave leave, and I sure as hell wouldn’t be tolerating anything that I’ve been for the last few hours!”

 

“The fact that it is theoretically possible for you to behave in a worse manner does not mean that the way you are behaving is okay.”

 

“You are not a position to be making demands about what I do.” His voice was more steady now, colder. “You have no power over me, and I could kill you in an instant.”

 

“So what?” Renee shot, her fin raised. “Everyone I’ve interacted with for years could kill me! The only reasons I am not already dead are dumb luck and the deaths of other test subjects before me. I’m hardly the paragon of durability; a particularly determined racoon could probably off me if no one intervened.”

 

Renee was breathing heavily. Panting, almost.

 

A splinter of nagging doubt slid through Alcor’s anger. She was far too young to feel like that. Not that that gave her any right to speak to him in such a way. Not that _anything_ would give her the right to speak to _him_ like that. Even if she was kinda right, he deserved better. And she wasn’t right. He was right. He was always right.

 

Except for the part of his brain that kept thinking that he wasn’t; that part was awful and wrong and fuck him.  

 

He had more important things to do then doubt himself. He had a screaming match with a child to win. And wow that sounded stupid when he put it like that.

 

Maybe that was a sign that it was time to back down.

 

No it absolutely was not. It didn’t matter if it was stupid, he couldn’t back down or _she would win_ . He couldn’t just let her win. He was Alcor, lord of nightmares, and he was not to be one upped by a mere child. Teen. She was solidly a mere teenager, which was a highly argumentative group, making this almost respectable. It would be good for her development. An emotional release after a highly stressful time. Wait, wasn’t he the he that was advocating against operation beat the child (oh wow he just lost naming privileges forever)? Which he was _he_ again?

 

This was stupid. Stupid and confusing and dumb. What was he even doing again?

 

Nothing had changed in the time it had taken him to derail himself; it seemed that being bound to Charlie hadn’t slowed his thought processes too badly. Renee was still towering over him (no one should tower over him, not being about to float was bullshit), breathing heavily and flushed in her face.

 

Shit, he forgot to come up with a witty retort.

 

Before he could rectify this grievous error, Vin broke the silence.

 

“Hey, could y’all keep it down a little?” he asked, sitting upright on his folded legs, watching intently. “Some of us are trying to sleep.”

 

“Vin, you couldn’t look less interested in sleep if you tried.” Renee said coldly.

 

“I didn’t say _I_ was trying to sleep. But presumably Charlie is.” He shrugged. “I don’t mean to interrupt this legendary squabble, but one of you is like, half kid who really needs zir sleep.”

 

“Do you really think now is the best time to worry about that?” Alcor glared at him.

 

“Well, yeah?” Vin shrugged his wings. “Would really matter if ze was awake. Assuming ze isn’t awake right now, which I don’t know. Can Charlie be woken up by your loud ass antics? And if not, how the fuck is ze sleeping through this shit?”

 

“I don’t know that!” Alcor shouted.

 

And stopped.

 

“I don’t know that…” He repeated, not really at anyone this time.

 

He had no idea. At all. And the answer wasn’t helpfully buzzing into his head like normal. He was completely cut off from the universe. He was actually going to have to solve this mystery himself. Like a person. Possibly with charts. It had been forever since he had an excuse to make a chart. This wasn’t really a logical situation to graph out, but he was one of the most powerful entities in the dimension and could most certainly find a way to make one relevant.

 

“Charlie is definitely sleeping right now,” he said quickly, “I can feel zir dreaming. Since I ended up taking over without exerting any effort once Charlie started to relax and stopped imposing zir will, I would say that Charlie needs to put in continuous effort to access the body’s senses.”

 

“Before you go changing the subject completely,” Renee said firmly,  “could you at least agree to make an effort to try to treat Charlie better?”

 

“What? Oh sure whatever.” Alcor loosely waved Charlie’s hand at her, the fury of the argument completely evaporated in the surging euphoria of a solid enough graphing opportunity. “It could also be that I was blocking the commotion from zir consciousness without noticing. Or, hm. Do either of you have a pen? Or any writing utensil really. A good dirt-drawing stick?”

 

“We sure do got some sticks around.” Vin said, “but I’m not sure even our better hit-stick sticks would be able to do much to mark the solid rock of the floor.”

 

Alcor turned Charlie’s head. “Hit-stick stick?”

 

“Hit stick.” Vin’s crest bobbed up. “It’s this great game I came up with. You try to hit each other with sticks, just like the sword fencers of yore. It’s treemendous fun, and a great excuse to let loose the asp in you.”

 

“I hate to break this to you, but you didn’t really invent the concept of stick fighting,” Renee said. “People have had the general idea of attacking their friends with innocuous objects for as long as there have been people.”

 

“Wow, people are dicks.”

 

“-” Renee stopped herself and shook her head. ”I’m going to sleep. Try not to stay up all night again.”

 

“What, with Tyrone here? Don’t be weird.” He closed his eyes. “True art can’t be made within the judgmental gaze of an observer. Or in the judgmental gaze of its creator. Anyone observing the process creates judgement, and that will just ruin the whole fucking thing. True art can only be made in pitch darkness, high off sleep deprivation and the exhilarating knowledge that any wrong move could wake your cavemate and end the experience in as single justifiably grumpy instant.”

 

“How many times did you stub your toe or walk into a wall last night?”

 

“Art is magic. Magic takes sacrifice. Through my suffering a mighty muse will arise, and the pact we form will bring about the single greatest pile of fucking garbage the world has ever seen. Children will weep and not know why. Butterflies will break away from their ancient paths. Atlanta will rise out of the sea again. The world will be forever changed, probably for the worse.” Vin slowly shook his head. “Or at least, that’s what would happen, but Tyrone gotta be here wrecking the moment. Also I’m really tired. And like, already in the squish bag.”

 

“Well then I suppose the future is set. No call of destiny nor artistic drive could ever be strong enough to overpower the awesome allure of a squish bag already sat upon.” Renee rested her hand over her heart. “I suppose this marks the beginning of the end of our travels together. Forevermore I will fondly look upon these times we shared, and I wish you only the best in your new life.”

 

“Weren't you sleep?” asked Vin, settling back onto his chest.

 

“Soon. First I must initiate the covering of the lights.” She slivered to the closest of the dimly glowing panels strewn about the area, covering it with a box left behind it. “Then I am become sleep, ignorer of worlds.”

 

“Like you could ever ignore the world. You probably spend sleep going over communist praxis.”

 

“Don’t be absurd.” She continued covering the lights. “Communist praxis is to be reviewed while staring at a wall dissociating. Sleep is the anarchy hours.”

 

“Go to bed ya damn nerd.” Vin rested his head between his wings.

 

Renee finished covering the lights, leaving only the small dots of scattered light that could have been either bioluminescent organisms or phosphorescent plastic to faintly define the room’s numerous obstacles. She curled around a large cushion, flopping down on it with her upper torso.

 

As the two teens settled in for the night, Alcor got up to try to go deeper into the cavern. “Try” being the key word; the trash cave lived up to its name, the miscellaneous crap scattered about rendered the ground difficult to traverse even while the lights had been illuminating it. The lights’ absence took all scraps of navigability with them, making every step an ordeal. After a bit of experimenting, Alcor determined that the mess could be shuffled through in a manner that could be described as practical in much the same way that a cuttlefish could be described as basically a jumping spider.

 

It didn’t take long for him to decide that he had probably gone far enough.

 

He sat on the nearest thing of the appropriate height, the disembodied head of an absent statue. In the dim lighting the only detail that could be made out was that it had two spatulas positioned over the head’s eyes like a mask.

 

Turning away from the others he removed the stolen sweater and lit a small flame in front of Charlie’s chest. The markings he remembered from earlier were now deeply scarred into the tissue, with no sign of the brilliantly golden ink that had been there when he was first summoned. They formed a rudimentary variant of his symbol, a five pointed star with a single large eye. The scar’s depth was concerning, but at least it wasn’t raw or blistered. Quite to the contrary: it looked old, healed over with ill-defined edges. What power it previously had was now certainly expended.

 

The array unsurprisingly lacked any summoning or binding abilities, instead focusing on protection and energy distribution. Alcor tried not to think about how it was likely the only thing that stopped him from killing Charlie in his initial rage.

 

It seemed the facility wasn’t so sloppy that they left significant clues about the spell they used on Charlie’s person. The initial binding was probably built into the summoning circle, and ideally that was all they used. A bit of blood could potentially be enough to shift the binding to a person, and wouldn’t be a sustained effect so could be countered with fairly normal banishment methods.

 

But they had Charlie’s skin, a living part of zir. They easily could have used a much more intense ritual, one that could kill zir if improperly dispelled.

 

Alcor slid down the smooth face of the head, transforming it from chair to backrest. He experimentally pushed a trickle of the fire held at Charlie’s chest to an ugly green piece of large flat plastic in front of him, the lid of a tub or something. The plastic bubbled at the fire’s touch, smoking slightly. It wasn’t the most practical method of writing, but it would do.

 

He divided the lid into quadrants for reasons that definitely weren’t almost entirely aesthetic and had the fire idle in the air as he thought.

 

Now, if he was a sketchy organization of vaguely competent morons and felt the need to trap a demon inside a child, how would he do it…

 

* * *

 

Charlie couldn’t move. Well, that wasn’t quite right. Charlie was moving, but couldn't control how. Movement was just happening in zir body, and ze couldn’t change it or make it stop and everything smelled like burnt plastic and hurt and zir heart was starting to race and this was wrong and ze needed to just move-

 

Charlie’s arm shot out beside zir, pulling zir down with the sudden shift in momentum.

 

The floor felt good, despite its hard and uneven nature. Lying on zir back, Charlie tried to take in zir surroundings.

 

There was a white-faced head, several feet tall directly above Charlie. It had large red outlines drawn over its lips and two spatulas over its eyes. Its mouth was open in a mediocre depiction of a smile, the interior eerily smooth with a tiny, highly detailed model of a cathedral placed in it.

 

Everything ached slightly too much for this to be a dream.

 

**Oh hey, you’re awake.**

 

_i mean i don’t think it’s safe to say that we are awake quite yet. waking normally involves like, a bed right? pretty sure there's normally a bed involved_

 

**Sleep is kinda my thing, kiddo. Pretty sure I would know if you were still out.**

 

_how is sleep our thing we like, never go to bed until-_

_wait shit fuck_

_you’re not me! you’re that weirdo from yesterday!_

 

**‘Weirdo’? And here I was thinking we were friends.**

 

_oh, sorry i didn’t really mean to call you that. you’re just really weird is the thing._

_um_

_what is this thing and why does it smell fumey?_

 

**The head doesn’t matter. It smells like fumes because no one had a pen.**

**And speaking of pens, you should look at what I was working on before you went and flailed your way to the floor.**

 

Charlie slowly pushed zirself up and looked around. In front of where they had been sitting was a highly charred ex-lid, surrounded by slightly less charred vaguely flat things. The burn marks looked like they could be some kind of alphabet, but their distribution was not at all like any sort of language that Charlie was familiar with.

 

_i have no idea what any of this means._

 

**It means that they’re morons, Charlie!**

**I have, in less than ten hours, come up with several more effective methods of binding me and controlling us using the resources that they have, and even more allowing the use of resources that they probably don’t. If whoever is behind this had any semblance of competence we would have been way more screwed over than we already were. The whole thing is a shameful display of shoddy workmanship. Can’t believe I got caught up in it honestly.**

 

_so you figured out what they did then? Does that mean you can fix this‽_

 

**What?**

**No.**

**No I did not.**

**I did, however, figure out quite a few things that they definitely did not do.**

 

_does that help us at all?_

 

**Well, it doesn’t not help us.**

 

_so no then._

 

**Well I have figured out some things that definitely won't work, so if we get to the point that I have to just guess on a reversal process you are a bit less likely to die.**

 

_that_

_is not very reassuring_

 

**It’s just the first night. I couldn't even get your input on anything. We’ll figure this out, don’t worry.**

 

_you know, i wasn’t actually that worried until right now_

 

**Really? You should have been. Did I not mention that you should be worried?**

 

_no!_

 

**Oh. Well.**

**I’m a bit of a sponge for energy and if I can’t get out of you soon I might burn through the walls of your psyche and kill you.**

**Sorry about that.**

 

_HOW ARE YOU JUST MENTIONING THIS NOW?_

 

**I guess I forgot?**

**Seemed pretty self evident. What did you think was happening?**

 

_i thought you were just stuck!_

 

**Huh. Maybe Renee had a point.**

 

_you talked to them?_

 

**Yeah. Is that a problem?**

 

_i kinda wanted to be to one to tell them is all_

_and_

_maybe_

_not quite so soon…_

 

**It wasn’t going to stay a secret regardless. Renee already had the basics worked out. She’s pretty perceptive.**

 

_they don’t hate me, do they?_

 

**What? Why would they hate you?**

**They’re concerned about you. At least, Renee is.**

**I’m not quite sure about Vin, but he definitely doesn’t hate you.**

 

_what did you guys talk about?_

 

**We talked about lots of stuff. Some of it you. Most of it not. I’ve been informed that apparently I’m being an ass, for which I apologize, I guess.**

 

_you guess you apologize?_

 

**This is a very frustrating situation for me, and I think I’ve probably been taking it out on you. I’m not really trying to, but I don’t really have much in the way of outlets right now.**

 

_this is the single shittiest apology I’ve ever heard_

 

**Well I haven’t exactly had to do this in a while, okay? You’re the first person I’ve spent more than an hour or two with in decades! I didn’t ask for this. I was doing just fine staying away from people managing my sheep, okay?**

 

_Okay, two things:_

 

  * __I didn’t ask for this either! You keep acting like the fact you didn’t cause this means that nothing you do is your fault and I’m sorry that this is inconvenient to you or whatever but this is my life and I am not just some obstacle that you need to work around.__


  * _You have sheep?_



 

 

**Yes they’re my-**

**I didn’t say you were an obstacle.**

 

_you don’t say a lot of things._

_and you don’t really need to explain or defend yourself here. i know that this is hard for you. i know you have reasons. everyone has reasons. that doesn’t make it okay._

 

**Okay I think this might be a good time to talk about boundaries.**

 

_do you think lines and veils could work?_

 

**?**

 

_When we would roleplay at the home, we had these things called lines and veils to make sure that the game didn’t go anywhere that would make people uncomfortable._

 

**You play DnD and more D?**

 

_not if i can help it that system is awful_

 

**Excuse me?**

 

_What? It is!_

 

**By what metric?**

 

_By pretty much every metric!_

_The mechanics are massively overcomplicated to the point that they are alienating, confusing, and generally not fun for any new player. There’s a huge gap between what the various classes are capable of accomplishing, there is literally no reason that anyone should chose a physical combat class; they have very few abilities that are as cool as what a caster can accomplish and get less focus in general. There’s a bunch of non-combat rules, which are again way more complicated than they need to be, but you don’t really get rewarded proportionately for anything done out of combat so there is absolutely no incentive to use them. And it uses way too many dice, making it really hard to intuitively understand the probability curves. And don’t even get me started on the morality system it’s so bad and unnecessary_

_It also treats humans as the default species and I’m really sick of that in general._

 

**Okay this is bull Dungeons Dungeons and more Dungeons is a fantastic game. Having complicated rules does not mean something is objectively bad.**

 

_I think it’s a bad game because it doesn’t accomplish its own stated purpose as a game. It’s a simulationist game but it is a bad simulation. There is a huge divide in what the classes are capable and the text doesn’t really do anything to let the player know that-_

 

**What, you want a disclaimer that some builds are weaker than others?**

 

_I would love to flip to the beginning of an archetype and just like, see a small note_

_‘we didn’t really try with this guy at all’_

_‘sorry about that’_

_There are whole classes that without absurd powerbuliding can’t match what a simple spellcaster build can do. In order to do anything really dynamic with a physical fighter you need to bring in a new book of rules._

_And it has established lore but most editions don’t integrate the fiction and the mechanics very well. Like, Land of Shadows does it better in every possible way. The lore is way more interesting and the classes are built into it in a way that it is hard to make a character without getting a sense of who they are and how they fit into the larger world. The atmosphere comes through even while you are just reading the rules! Some of the simulationist elements aren’t well executed and I’m still not sure how some of the stats work but what it does well it does really well._

_And URPS is absurdly better at simulation. It has problems but at least there is a strong push to give your characters flaws. It still has lots of balance issues but it at least has tools for the GM to level the field._

_And then there are the minimalistic games! Manuscripts and Maces can do a huge amount of what D3 does and the rules fit on one page! And there's a Powered by the Armageddon variant that has some added complexity but still can fit everything needed for casual play, including class abilities and advancement, on three pages._

_Have you actually tried other systems?_

 

**Yes, on occasion. I generally don’t like them as much.**

**And what makes a good game anyway, by your absurdly high standards?**

 

_I don’t actually have that high of standards. I like a lot of games! I like trying new games. Everyone just treats D3 as the definitive roleplaying game and I’m so tired of it because there are so many systems that are so much better._

_I really like games that can unobtrusively help the group tell a shared story, and D3 fails at this in pretty much every way possible, so I’m not a fan. I like it when the players can determine what the outcome of the dice means, how their characters’ success or failure effects the plot._

_I guess I really like to see games that shape the conversation around something other than ‘player tries thing, roles die, GM tells them what roll means, repeat.’_

_One of my friends recently started a game where she creates the world by asking the players questions about the way the specifics of the world and assigns players to NPC roles when their characters aren’t active, explaining the NPCs motivation and then asking guiding questions about what they do. So she serves more as a delegator of who tells the story when than as the singular Storyteller, and it’s was really fun and_

 

_wait this isn’t what we’re supposed to be talking about._

 

**So tell me about lines and veils.**

 

_Right. So they were a thing we used to establish boundaries back when we roleplayed at the home. and i was thinking things might be easier to deal with everything if i just think about it like it’s a really weird campaign._

_like you’re just some annoying guy playing the conjurer gathering the next table over who can’t keep his opinions to himself._

 

**Excuse me?**

 

_sorry. i wasn’t trying project that._

_i’m still not quite clear on the line between talking thinking and thinking thinking._

_anyway._

_A line is something that absolutely cannot be crossed. It does not happen, it is not talked about, it might as well not exist._

_A veil is similar, but less extreme. It is something avoided. It can be brought up but not in detail. You can vague blog about it, basically._

 

_I would like to put a line on you taking over completely like you were when we started. Without warning or explanation. I don’t really want to think about that as something that is possible._

 

**Makes sense. Anything else I should know about?**

 

_Lines and veils are useful in that they can be brought up whenever. I can have trouble thinking about things that might come up and be a problem, but it’s really easy to draw a line when things hit to the point where I need one, or even when things are reaching the point that I might soon._

 

**Cool.**

**I’d like to put a veil on you shittalking DDamD.**

 

_I’m being serious!_

 

**So am I. Dead serious. I don’t wanna hear it.**

 

_I’m not saying that you can’t have fun playing it, just that it has bad game design. One of the funnest games I ever played was so badly written that I accidentally made what was functionally a trickster god. It was a lot of fun! It was still awful game design._

 

**I’m serious I don’t want to go into this.**

 

_._

_._

_._

_Fine._

_sheep. what’s up with that?_

 

**They’re my familiars. I like them, they’re interesting without being as complicated as people. Why are you so interested in this?**

 

_I like animals. and you don’t really come off as the sort of person who does._

 

**…**

 

_is something up?_

 

**It just occured to me that they aren’t going to be happy with this happening again.**

**I’m really not looking forward to that conversation.**

 

_This has happened before?_

 

 **Not like,** **_this_ ** **this no. I’ve had… other things come up that cause me to go MIA for a bit.**

**They...**

**They get pretty pissy when I disappear without telling them first.**

**I can’t blame them too much though, considering they would die pretty quick without me, but...**

**I could really live without getting lectured by my own familiars.**

 

_This is easier than people are?_

 

**Well, they would actually back down if I told them to and meant it.**

**I just don’t, normally.**

**It’s good for them to get it out of their systems.**

 

_You know, I kinda feel that if you, with your ‘leveling a forest as an act of restraint’ self, actually meant it then most people would probably back down-_

 

“Is everything alright in there?”

 

Charlie jumped at Renee’s voice, and turned around.  

 

_yes?_

 

“I mean,” Charlie stuttered, “yes? Is there some reason that there wouldn’t be?”

 

“It just looked like things were pretty heated for a moment there.” Renee said. “I wanted to make sure he was acting reasonably. Did he apologize?”

 

“A sincere attempt at an apology was made, I think.” Charlie covered zir mouth with zir hands. “No it wasn’t that, we were just talking about roleplaying games. He has really bad opinions about rpgs.”

 

**Excuse me!**

 

“Oh sorry,” Charlie said loudly, hands dropping to zir sides. “He sure does have opinions about things that no statement of judgement will be made about. Let’s talk about something else.”

 

“How about breakfast?” Vin  asked. “We have a wonderful assortment of aging nutrition bars steadily stockpiled over the past few months. Just like your ol’ kidnappers used to make.”

 

He enthusiastically gestured at a bowl, set on a crumbling plaster dinosaur skull, containing six identical unwrapped tan bars.

 

Charlie cautiously took a bar. It was a stale sort of soft, as if the proteins holding it together collectively decided to give up on the whole endeavor.

 

“Oh, number three. An excellent choice,” Vin said, fanning his fingers and wings. “That one’s food flavored!”

 

Charlie nibbled on its end. It was… edible. There were not many other traits that could be attributed to it. Even Vin’s statement of ‘food flavored’ seemed a tad generous.

 

“So what’s going on with all this anyway?” Charlie was sitting curled up, resting zir hands on zir raised knees. “There’s just a random secret medical facility giving kids random inherently magical abilities? That seems pretty weird.”

 

“I would hesitate to call it random.” Renee put her palms together and momentarily closed her eyes. “They are very focused on the Sight, specifically in regards to scrying the future. Despite the fact that I never manifested any discernible futuresense, it was always the first thing they enquired about during our… evaluatory sessions.

 

“I always made an effort to obfuscate the full extent of the abilities I had gained, but if I’m being entirely honest it was probably unnecessary; I never got the sense they were invested in what I could do after they managed to determine that I hadn’t magically acquired the ability to sense the future.” She intently inspected her nails, systematically cleaning them with each other with forceful scrapes to their undersides. “They simply wanted to figure out if anything they had done had resulted in any major changes so they could figure out what to try next.”

 

“It was a very different experience than what Vin described going through.” She finished, interlocking her fingers tightly.

 

“Hey, they weren’t just interested in my future junk.” Vin interjected. “They were very into my healing factor.”

 

Charlie tilted zir head. “Healing factor?”

 

“A healing factor,” Vin explained, “being a factor where you heal. Just like Wolverine, or Ms. Marvel, or Dead-.”

 

“Isn’t a wolverine an extinct Australian rodent?” Charlie asked.

 

“What? No.” Vin said. “I mean, maybe, but the Wolverine I’m talking about was like, a human dude. Well, a fake almost-human dude.”

 

“Why are you assuming that Charlie, or anyone really, would understand a reference to your ancient media?” Renee asked.

 

“I mean, ze could. There were thousands of people that frequented that board.”

 

“So, around a ten thousandth of a percent chance that Charlie would be one of them.” Renee said. “I suppose with odds like those there really was no way to resist derailing the conversation.”

 

She paused before adding “Anyway, wolverines were from New Zealand and were associated with demons, which would probably explain their ‘fake almost-human dude’ counterpart having magic.”

 

“Are you sure about that?” Charlie asked. “It doesn’t sound right.”

 

**No, that is definitely accurate.**

 

“You’re damn right she’s wrong!” Vin puffed his feathers a little. “Wolverine isn’t magic, he’s a human who had special chunk of DNA made by aliens millions of years ago activated, giving him powers that strongly resemble magic, but are actually science because those two things are totally not at all the same.”

 

“Yes this is definitely a thing that matters.” Renee sighed. “Could we possibly get back to the topic at hand?”

 

“No.” Vin’s crest fell. “The topic at hand blows. You know what is so much cooler than me being able to regenerate? Someone who doesn’t actually exist being able to, at least until he got sick and then became the ultimate dad guy. Especially since that brings us to Kamala! Who also has a healing factor, although she is a completely different kind of almost human, albeit still via ancient alien shenanigans. Like, we could be talking about a universe where a planet-eating dude was stopped with the powers of squirrels and you want to talk about my stupid shit? They only cared about the healing thing was because the future vis would be pretty worthless without it.”

 

“Wait,” Charlie crinkled zir face. “How does regeneration affect your sight at all?”

 

“It doesn’t technically. But if you want to make someone look at something stupidly bright more than once then it comes in handy.” The feathers on his tail fanned slightly. “Probably was also helpful for speeding up all the shit they wanted to do with my eyes. I don’t know, you’d have to ask Renee, iris I could blindly speculate on her level but I’m just a pupil.”

 

“Heh.” Charlie carefully inspected the wall of the cave. “That sounds... not good.”

 

“Was that not the answer you were looking for? I’m sorry to make a spectacle of the past, but eye am not quite vitreous enough to retina this go.”

 

Charlie covered zir mouth, trying to stifle zir awkward giggle. “So you think this might be about some really bright thing in the future then?”

 

**Why do you keep doing that?**

 

“Presumably yes.” Renee’s shoulders relaxed slightly. “I’m assuming that they are trying to determine the precise nature of the final blackout.”

 

_doing what?_

 

“The what?” Vin asked.

 

**Covering your mouth whenever you say something.**

 

Renee’s arms dropped slack as she turned to stare at him. “The final blackout. As in, the infamous future point that all scrying stops at. Are you honestly telling me that at no point, in all your time at the flapping bee did it occur to you to netsearch anything along the lines of ‘scrying future blinding light’? I understand that you have never bothered keeping up with current events but we’ve known about this for centuries.”

 

_oh_

_that_

_i cant talk right now but i want to and if i cover my mouth the words are less real so i can_

 

“I don’t like thinking about this shit when I don’t have to.” Vin shrugged his wings. “I’m not going to spend my free time getting balls deep into all the fuckery I’m trying to escape.”

 

**That makes literally no sense.**

 

_Thanks I hadn’t noticed that in the all these years of being the only person who does this._

 

“The final blackout?” Charlie finished zir bar and put zir hand over zir mouth again. “Isn’t that the reason they’re making that huge machine?”

 

“Ah yes,” She put her palms together, “the Great Machine of Everline Eves. Although it certainly does contain the potential to explain the blackouts, for some reason not everyone is willing to trust it with the entire future. The minor dark spots it has produced have corresponded perfectly with historical records, which is a good sign, but there are so many unknowns that many people would go to great lengths to try and determine the outcome of its primary activation, or if it will even manage to get properly activated without sabotage. And apparently these lengths include experimental magic on sapient beings.”

 

“Sabotage? Why would anyone sabotage it?”

 

“The Great Machine,” Renee’s eyes closed, “was designed to explain the blackouts in that it would be the cause of them. The nature of the final blackout, however, means that anything could happen beyond what the machine is supposed to do. The final stage of its activation could easily cause, or happen concurrently with, some massive disaster, and possibly one that would only happen because of the machine’s creation. There are people worried that the blackout is a catastrophic informational paradox and that, were we to simply leave it alone, the future would shift to something more normal.”

Her hand rotated around her wrist. “There are also people who think that the whole thing’s a front for something much more sinister, but considering the size of the project, along with the diversity of groups working on it and the rather astounding degree of transparency they are holding themselves to, I personally doubt that this is the case. I would not be surprised at all to find that there are other projects in the works that plan to take advantage of the timing of the blackout - I would actually be rather surprised if there weren’t - but I think it is reasonably safe to take what we know of the Great Machine at face value.

“There is also opposition by those who don’t trust a state - or really anyone - with the machine’s projected capabilities.  And considering the things I have personally undergone by the hands of a supposedly highly regulated non-governing organization, I’m rather inclined to agree - it will theoretically be producing enough energy that the only reasonable emergency heat sink is to convert it into matter, which is to my admittedly limited knowledge of advanced physics an absolutely preposterous amount of power.”

 

“Personally undergone? You know who is behind the facility?” Charlie leaned forward. “Are we entering the paranoid ramble zone?”

 

“It’s almost certainly the Supernatural Control and Disaster Prevention Taskforce. I really wouldn’t consider that a paranoid theory considering what we’ve witnessed.”

 

“Didn’t the Taskforce do something sort of like this like a century ago?” Charlie shifted zir gaze to the floor. “I thought that they wouldn’t be able to do anything like it again after journalists discovered that they had been doing experiments on souls.”

 

“Because if there is one thing history has taught us it’s that once a powerful organization is caught doing something they shouldn’t they sincerely apologize, stop at once, and make sure to do everything they can to ensure the victims recover and can thrive in their lives.”

 

“Aren’t people supposed to be like, watching for something like this though?” Charlie leaned back again.

 

“The problem with that is they are currently the only organization with the authority to possess knowledge about anything demonic, and they also are the ones who have the power to classify things as demonic. This means that they can easily make any investigation an internal affair, and amazing rarely find themselves guilty of doing anything impermissible.

 

“There has actually already been an incident since the infamous Incident 51 where various magical experiments were uncovered. There were about two hours between it being made public and the taskforce finding evidence of demonic interference, closing off the scene from all external investigators and determining that the whole thing was the fault of a suspiciously well funded ‘crime syndicate’, despite there being no apparent method of extracting profit from the arrangement.”

 

“Oh god you got her started,” Vin said.

 

She shot a quick glare at Vin before continuing. “I do sympathize with the hope that the institutions that have power over us also have our best interests in mind and that any major deviation on their part from that is, at its root, a misunderstanding or a mistake, but from a historical perspective there is nothing surprising that has occurred here. Unethical experimentation has been being conducted on non-humans since the transcendence, and on supposedly undesirable humans for even longer. And experiments are just the beginning; forced sterilization, deliberate failure to do anything about major health risks, turning a blind eye to corporations effectively poisoning air, water, or soil of an area or just directly poisoning it themselves; the list goes on, and every time it’s discovered it’s treated like some shocking and unheard-of event before being deliberately covered up or, more frequently, just getting forgotten about. And that’s assuming that a decent number of people even care when it is discovered, which is frequently not the case.”

 

“She managed to get all news from the past century blocked for the both of us.”

 

“Why are you complaining about that when you spent the vast majority of your time engaging in millenia forgotten media? It took six months and me pointing it out for you to even notice!”

 

“I liked not giving a shit to be a choice.” Vin put his palms up. “When someone else prevents you from giving a shit it’s this whole different thing and it sucks.”

 

“Not to be a bother,” Charlie said, still looking at the floor, “but is this all the food you guys have? What are you planning on doing once it runs out?”

 

“Unfortunately it is.” Renee said. “Originally the plan was to find a small town, one with a bit less surveillance than a city would have, and, well, acquire supplies as needed until things blew over a bit.”

 

“Originally? What happened?” Charlie pushed zir knees up to zir chest and leaned forward, nose falling into the crack between zir legs.

 

Renee looked upwards, tracing around her ear with a hand. “A serious failing in foresight on my part. It turns out that we have been reclassified as A Class nonhumans, so our magical signatures will trigger a high alert, and we can’t do anything to hide that.

 

She pulled her fingers into a fist, pressing her nails against her ear. “This really should not have been a surprise; there is certainly historical precedent for such a thing.” She relaxed, arms falling to her sides. “I guess I just thought that maybe they wouldn’t bother with such things. We are fairly harmless, after all, and… I guess I just wasn’t prepared to deal with this large an obstacle.”

 

“We can always go hunting.” Vin puffed his chest out. “Eat animals like early man!”

 

“What‽” Charlie exclaimed. “Thats disgusting.”

 

Vin cocked his head. “Where do you think meat comes from?”

 

“A factory? We took a tour of a production plant before, they’re really cool. And animal-less.” Charlie frowned. “Anyway how would we even get the animals? I can’t run a deer down.”

 

“I’ve read all about trap making. Most of the stuff I read is from before we could grow meat so I’m pretty sure the authors knew what they were talking about.” Vin looked up, “but digging a big-ass pit does sounds pretty hard. We should probably go for something smaller than deer... Bread’s basically made from crickets, right?

 

“I think cricket flour still has some plant flour in it.” Renee said. “But there are lots of plants out, we could probably figure out some sort of substitution.”

 

“Don’t you kneed an oven to make bread?” Charlie asked. “Where could we go that would have an oven? And for that matter, since the small town thing didn’t work out, where are we going to stay? I don’t think it’s safe to stay this close to the facility, is it?

 

“My vote is still on going to the moon.” Vin said. “They’ll let you do anything on the moon.”

 

“Because if there is anything I want in this life it’s to live in a medical observatory,” Renee said.

 

“Hey I don’t care if doctors want to check my vitals or whatever. I’m fine so long as they keep their scalpels to themselves.”

 

“And how would you know that the moon isn’t just as bad as here?” She crossed her arms.

 

Vin leaned back. “I got a good friend who lives on the moon.”

 

“And they knew all about your predicament, yes?”

 

“Oh come on.” Vin rolled his eyes. “The moon doesn’t have people carefully monitoring all communication to hide some massive experiment thing. They let people off the moon. She’s taken like, three trips here and wants to visit me each time but I’ve always told her I’m too sick and man she’s going to think I just fucking died isn’t she.”

 

“Okay, even assuming the moon is what it seems,” Renee shook her head slightly, “and ignoring the glaring question of how in all the small gods we would get to the actual moon, why do you think that they wouldn’t just send us back the moment we encountered someone? It isn’t like they lack computers on the moon.”

 

“Yeah but like half the moon is in some weird ass demon cult and it ain’t even a secret.” Vin paused. “Weird as in really fucking chill to be clear here. They wouldn't give a shit about us. They’d probably figure if we were too big a threat the patron demon of the moon would eat us or some shit.”

 

“Doctors and demons? You are _really_ selling this place.”

 

“Okay look-” Vin’s eyes went wide. “Shit something’s wrong. We need to get out.”

 

Renee closed her eyes and concentrated. “You’re right. They're coming fast. I got careless… Should have been watching…”

 

“Let’s play the blame game later.” Vin’s puff level was rapidly approaching the chart’s edge. “We need to get out.”

 

They ran out of the cave. Around the entrance, spread out in a wide semicircle, was a wall of security guards. They had guns. They had dogs. They had other, harder to identify things.

 

The barking was coming from a dog at the head of the circle. Two people stood adjacent to it. Both apparently human, fair skin and worried expressions. The tall one was wearing a different kind of outfit from everyone else in the area. Less military. The short one was wearing the same militant style as the rest, but slightly fancier.

 

The kids stopped in the cave’s entrance. Renee was frozen, staring fixated at the holstered gun of the fancy guard.

 

The lead dog was excited, straining at its leash.

 

“Oh my god. That’s what a dog is?” Vin said. “It’s so big! I thought dogs were only supposed to be like chest height.”

 

Renee blinked and broke her eyes away from the distant gun. “Vin, you're barely over chest height. Is… is this really the most important thing to be worried about right now?”

 

“As opposed to what? So we’re boned, it isn’t like this was ever actually going to work.”

 

**I think that I should front now.**

 

_what are you going to do there are so many of them_

 

The tall one was talking. The words surrounded Charlie like an ocean, a vast pressure as unbearable as it was meaningless.

 

**I’ll get them out of our way.**

 

_is this just another continuation of ‘My offer to kill them still stands?’_

 

**They have enough warding and general protection that many of them could easily get out with only third degree burns.**

 

_i’m not going to just let you kill a bunch of people_

 

 **I** **_just said_ ** **I would probably be largely maming.**

**And why is this a problem? These are not good people. They aren’t going to just let you go. They literally kidnapped you to perform dark magic. They done things that are just as bad to Renee and Vin for years, and we have no reason to think that you are the only ones.**

**People who are dead or hospitalized can’t perform unethical experimentation.**

 

_i don’t think these are the people who are performing the experiments though_

 

**Well I can kill them after I figure out how to get me out of you.**

 

_i dont want you to kill anyone_

 

**I don’t exactly need your permission**

 

_I know. But you’d be crossing a line, and that would be your choice, not mine._

 

**.**

**.**

**.**

**Fine.**

**I will do what I can to get us out of this situation through the least efficient method possible and avoid doing anything I have a good reason to suspect would seriously harm or kill any of the people who would kill you in an instant if they thought it would make their lives easier, ignoring how this will definitely ensure that is exact same problem happens again.**

**Are those satisfactory terms for you?**

 

_if you did kill them they would just send other people and everything would escalate but that doesnt matter now and_

_okay_

_what you said is fine let’s do this._

 

Charlie took a deep breath, or at least a breath that was significantly slower and deeper than zir previous breaths, and tried to relax.

 

Ignore the near future, ignore the vivid memory of helplessness of paralysis of -

 

Ze took another breath. It was even less qualified to be called deep than the previous one.

 

Ignore the guns. It should be easy, as they were quite small. Inconspicuous. Easily hidden and easily capable of being missed so there were probably way way more than ze could see except why would there be that wouldn’t matter you really only need one don’t you?

 

Zir body took a step forward.

 

_wait no what are you doing they have guns i don’t want to die_

 

**If they were planning on shooting us they already would have.**

**I’m just going to talk to them a little, and then I’ll try to scare them off, okay?**

 

_okay that is makes fine sense_

_it okay im okay with it this is finefinefine_

 

**Right. I think I’m going to ignore you until this is over.**

 

“No drones this time?” Alcor asked, stopping a few steps from the entrance.

 

“I have no desire to have a repeat of last night’s disaster, no,” said the tall person.

 

Unlike Alcor, who was managing to stand larger than Charlie truly was, they didn’t carry their height well. They were lanky and stood lightly slouched and leaning onto their left side. Their dark purple hair spiraled around the top of their head in a tight braid. Dark bags hung under their slightly squinted eyes.

 

Alcor took another step forward. The lead dog’s barks became frantic, triggering an avalanche of noise from the rest of the pack. No longer excited for the hunt it turned in tight circles, torn between the need to defend and the need to flee.

 

The guard in the fancier uniform drew their weapon.

 

“You do realize,” Alcor said, “that if anything happens to this child things are going to get very bad for you very quickly, right?”

 

“Right,” the guards’ partner said. “Because you care deeply about the welfare of children.”

 

“Is something arbitrarily deciding to like kids really any stranger than an animal abandoning the drives formed from millions of years of evolution pushing them to put the care of children above many of their own physical needs?”

 

“I’m not getting into a debate about morality with you of all entities.”

 

“And I don’t care what you think. Now, let’s move on from wasting each other’s time. I’m going to give you the opportunity to leave, right now, without anyone getting hurt.”

 

“If you actually care about the wellbeing of that child at all, you’ll come with us.”

 

“Really.” Alcor’s voice was liquid oxygen, unfathomably cold and poised to combust.

 

“Your present situation is incredibly unstable. If you leave, the child will die. This was never supposed to be a long-term system. If you come with us we can reverse the ritual before any more damage is done.”

 

“Oh, so the child you forced me into can live zir life with only mild psychological scarring.” Alcor’s glare intensified. “How generous of you. And all the other people you’ve abducted? The ones with the nerve to have long term schemes committed on them?”

 

“I’m sure that we can come to some sort of agreement to-”

 

“Some kind of agreement?” He exploded. “Just because you strip someone of their agency doesn’t mean their life is yours to give. If you want something enough to demand my attention you need to face the consequences of your actions.

 

“I don’t trust you. I don’t think you intend to follow through with anything you have claimed. I don’t think you have ever actually done anything like this ritual before. I don’t think that you are going to be willing to just let me leave. And even on the off chance it actually is your intention, I don’t think that you actually have the knowledge to follow through.”

 

Blue fire quite literally exploded around him. “And I have better things to be doing than wasting my time talking to you.”

 

With a quick gesture the fire burst shot away from him, forming a barrier around the cave entrance. Even at the farthest point from it, the fire’s heat still hit Renee and Vin like a truck.

 

Alcor spun around.

 

“Renee, we don’t have much time before they realize that the effects of the fire are almost purely psychological. You need to cast an illusion over us.”

 

“What?” She shuddered at his voice. “Right. But… The dogs. I can’t do smells. Not highly sensitive ones.”

 

“Don’t worry about the dogs. They aren’t anywhere near well trained enough to be willing to follow me if I don’t want them to. Just give us the same sort of cover you were last night.”

 

“Okay. Cover. Yes. I can do that.” She put her hands to her forehead.

 

“Vin, where do we need to go.”

 

“I… I don’t know! Why are you asking me?” Vin’s neck was pulled back and puffed out.

 

“All you need to do is listen to your intuition.” Alcor’s voice was level but sharp. “Where do you think it would be a good idea to go?”

 

“Not here?” He scratched the ground with his claws. “The moon? I can’t-”

 

“Vin.” Renee said slowly. “The cave is part of a system. Do any of the tunnels feel particularly auspicious right now?”

 

“Nothing feels auspicious right now!” He said, compressing into himself. “We don’t even know there is an out. We don’t know where any of the tunnels even go, or that they even go anywhere.”

 

“Vin, you’re panicking, try to calm down.” Renee gently stated.

 

“What? Panicking? I hadn’t noticed!” he said, looking more like concerningly hairy peach than anything else. “Calm down, god you’re just so brilliant aren’t you. Why didn’t I think about that? How did I ever manage to continue existing long enough to meet you and your amazing knowing skills?”

 

“Okay,” Alcor gripped at Charlie’s bangs, “we don’t actually need any amount of magic luck right now. There were enough branches that even if just pick one at random and if it doesn’t go anywhere it will probably be fine. Let’s just get out of the circle of _armed guards_.”

 

“They’re going to put up surveillance around the entrance.” Vin’s words ran together. “We’re not going to be able to get out again. This isn’t going to work this was never going to work.”

 

“It doesn’t matter right now if they block off this entrance, okay?” Alcor snarled. “We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.”

 

“Can everyone please stop shouting.” Renee said, aggressively calmly. “it is very hard to concentrate.”

 

Alcor took a deep breath. “I’m. Sorry. Let’s just go. I can pick a way. It doesn’t matter.”

 

He took a few steps towards the cave. Renee quickly slithered to his side. He did not hear the sounds of other footsteps.

 

“Vin.” He said. “We’re going.”

 

The absence of a response drove into his temple like a pin.

 

Clenching Charlie’s jaw he turned around.

 

Vin was still.

 

Looking away.

 

Possibly breathing.

 

“Vin.” Alcor walked towards the frozen avian.

 

Vocally afar. “Drop the fire.”

 

“What.”

 

No inflection. “Drop it now.”

 

Alcor.

 

Alcor dispelled his fire.

 

The facility staff were a mess. No longer a impassive wall but a swarm of ants, they scurried around driven by their own tasks. The dogs were abandoning any pretence of obedience, straining their leashes, scratching the ground, frantically barking, anything they could to get away get out get anywhere else. As the fire evaporated to nothing so did the action - purpose petering away to uncertainty.

 

“Well,” said the tall person. “That was... convenient.”  

 

“Should we keep going, Doctor?” Asked one of the identically dressed guards, looking up from the elaborate triangle of runes they were finishing.

 

“No.” The doctor sighed. “All it would do at this point is disable our own equipment. Can anyone get the dogs under control at all? I don’t want to think about the logistics of tracking someone with foresight without them.”

 

“So we’ve lost them again,” said the short one.

 

“Basically.”

 

“You know Dana, that was pretty much the worst negotiation attempt I’ve ever seen,” they continued.

 

“Why thank you, Gonzales.” Dana said pinching the bridge of their nose. “Here I was thinking everything went smashingly.”

 

Renee moved her lower torso around Vin and Alcor, hugging them too her. “Should we be leaving?”

 

Vin drooped over, steadying himself on her lower torso.

 

“Generally,” Gonzales continued, “you don’t want to actively antagonize someone who has what you want.”

 

“And generally you don’t send someone with no experience and only a crash course for training into the field, and yet here I am.”

 

Alcor quietly answered Renee’s question. “Let’s see if we can learn anything useful. Should be fine unless one of them trips over us.”

 

“Aren’t you supposed to be an expert?” Gonzales asked. “Didn’t you have to do something like this to graduate?”

 

“I majored in math. I move numbers around. I ask people in a lab for more numbers if I’m feeling really adventurous.” They looked down. “There are only a few hundred people with formal and legal experience with this on the planet. And for some reason none of them could be convinced to get dragged into all this bulls… these bulls.”

 

Gonzales laughed. “Highly professional. Minor swearing is definitely the line you need to draw.”

 

“If you can find something in the employee code of conduct against ranting in the woods I’d love to hear about it.”

 

The other guards had given up on even pretending to do anything useful. Some were paying attention to the conversation between Gonzales and Dana, most were milling about, splitting off and talking amongst each other.

 

“Seriously though, what the hell are we supposed to do from here?” Gonzales asked. “I don’t imagine that you’re going to be able to diplomatically convince them to come along with us when we finally find them again.”

 

“Now we admit that we aren’t qualified to handle this and get the higher ups to send someone who is before everything gets even worse.”

 

A cloud of sharply artificial citrus scent filled the area, emanating from a vaping guard.

 

Gonzales shook their head. “They aren’t going to like that.”

 

“Well I don’t think I’d like dying either so they can deal with it.”

 

“Are you sure it’s really that big of a deal though?” Gonzales asked with little certainty. “They’re just a bunch of kids, at least physically. Can’t we just tranq em?”

 

“Do you know how to judge the appropriate amount of sedative needed to safely subdue a child suffering a completely unique and physically degrading condition without having any way to know in advance how it has affected their body?” Dana snapped. “While their magical signature is a fluctuating garbled mess?”

 

“Okay, point taken.” Gonzales flicked some dirt from their nails. “So what actually happens if the child dies, anyway? How confident are we that he can actually deliver on his threat?”

 

“If the child dies he will be released and will absolutely kill us,” Dana said without hesitation.

 

“Not to be morbid,” Gonzales said, “but if he’s as dangerous as you say, why hasn’t he killed us already?”

 

“That’s hard to say.” Dana sighed. “We are dealing with one of the most notoriously unpredictable entities ever. If I had to guess, I would say that either he is hoping that we’ll tell him how to undo the ritual, exerting enough power to actually get past our wards would be too potentially harmful to the child, or he has some sort of agreement with one of the children that’s staying his hand.”

 

“Not to imply that I know better than those above,” Gonzales crossed their arms, “but why the actual fuck would you do your trial run on a notoriously unpredictable entity?”

 

“Because the predictable outcome is that everyone involved dies very quickly.”

 

“So fuck the why are we… would anyone do this at all?”

 

“Why would you hire on an expert and ignore everything they say? Why would you use experimental magic to achieve what is functionally the same effect as one of the oldest rituals we know about? Why would you do anything in this absolute hurricane of errors that lead to this goddamn shitstorm?” Diane flicked her arms up. “Because theoretically this method would give us unprecedented control in a situation where the power dynamic is normally out of our favor. Because it looks good on paper. Because despite not knowing a nightmare from a high fae, a couple bureaucrats clearly know what is best in every circumstance that they would never think to dirty their hands in actually bringing to life.”

 

“Did that help at all?” Gonzales asked. “You feeling any better?”

 

Dana pressed her eyes into her palms. “Not even a little.”

 

“You wanna get some drinks tonight?”

 

“I think I’m going to be ears deep in the headache of trying to explain that sending someone actually qualified to take care of your mess is more important than trying to keep anyone who will understand exactly how severely and preventably you messed up from finding out.”

 

“You want to get some drinks anyway?”

 

“I don’t know.” Dana rolled their head back. “Maybe. Probably. Something so sweet I won’t be able to feel my teeth.”

 

“So,” one of the other guards asked, “we done here or what?”

 

“I was kinda hoping that the illusion would pass and we would get some footprints or something to work with, honestly.” Dana sighed. “The combination of farsight and illusions makes it a bit farfetched, but... ugh.”

 

“You think it’s worth it to keep the place guarded?” Gonzales asked.

 

“Not really. The caves here are a labyrinth and they have foresight. We’re not going to just stumble across them while they are actively avoiding us, and frankly even if we did there isn’t much of a point until we have an actual plan better than hoping that his desire to keep a random kid alive and wellish remains strong enough for him to keep tolerating us.”

 

The facility staff meandered off. Presumably to return to their bunker, and finish off their assigned duties. Afterwhich they would, presumably, get smashed and say regrettable things to their superiors only to wake up the next day and find the only thing that they would take back was that fifth plate of cheese curds.

 

In a less hypothetical moment Renee was relaxing, slightly, letting her torso distance itself from her companions.  Vin was pushing himself upright again, shaking his head as if a strong enough physical movement could displace the heavy pressure that filled it.

 

**Looks like we’re done here, I’m going to take back seat again.**

  
  


**Charlie?**

 

_ ?  _

 

**Are you ready to front again?**

 

  _sure_

 

**Um**

**Charlie?**

 

_? _

 

**Are you okay?**

 

_sure_

 

**Really?**

 

_Sure_ **_._ **

 

**Okay then...**

**I’m going to let go now.**

 

Charlie’s body shifted. Ze wasn’t expecting it, had heard what Alcor said but the words couldn’t be translated into action, into a future. The movement was not surprising, however; it was simply happening. Something had to happen and there was no reason it shouldn’t be this.

 

Someone was talking to zir.

 

It was Renee. She was saying too much and too fast for Charlie to process it all.

 

She wanted to know if ze was in control.

 

She wanted to know if ze was okay.

 

She wanted Charlie to know that she was sorry for other people doing things she had no control over.

 

Was ze in control? Charlie’s arm moved. It followed a mental command, with slight resistance from the upper arm where the sweater that had been stolen for zir was clinging to the sweaty skin. Lower, the cloth was loose and bunched, as there was more cloth then there was arm space, so the cloth rested on itself in folds on folds on folds.

 

Renee was talking again. She was concerned.

 

It occurred to Charlie that she was probably expecting an answer.

 

The arm didn’t feel like it was part of Charlie. It was its own distinct object, with significant physical distance between it Charlie.

 

Everything was far away from where Charlie was. Charlie was unsure where they thought they were, but the uncertainty was fine. Most things were fine.

 

The arm slid to a vertical position, the hand attached to it putting up two fingers in a sign of generalized approval. Everything was to move on its own, not forcefully tugged like Alcor was in control but gently gliding on their own accord, which coincidentally aligned with what Charlie wanted them to do.

 

Renee didn’t seem to find the given gesture particularly convincing.

 

Was ze okay? Zir heart rate and breathing seemed normal. Ze didn’t feel upset. Ze didn’t feel much of anything. And that was okay. Therefore ze was okay.

 

Charlie’s hands couldn’t find a useful gesture to communicate this information.

 

Renee was talking again. Responding to what Charlie had said. Which apparently meant that ze had words right now. This was probably a good thing.

 

She wanted to know if ze felt up to moving again. She said that they needed to find somewhere safe.

 

Charlie stood up. Not quite sure when ze had sat down. Again gave an affirmative gesture. Started walking in the direction that Renee was turned towards.

 

She was talking with Vin. The words were not aimed at Charlie and filled the area without any meaning to zir. The air felt heavier from the sound, like the words had a physical presence. They caused a pressure to them that the brisk breeze could do nothing to liberate.

 

The breeze was chilly, cutting straight through the knit fabric of the sweater Charlie was wearing. Zir skin tingled, and the world tingled. Everything was blurred into a single haze with arbitrary things popping into highly detailed focus.

 

There was a sapling on the side of the path, smooth bark that was an almost-white brown. Already stripped of leaves, one of its two branches torn off and hanging from a stray strip of bark. It swung in the breeze, back and forth and back and forth and back…  

 

* * *

 

Renee really wished she had a plan. She was a little shocked at how calm she was remaining in one’s absence. She had been almost paralyzed earlier thinking about how little she could plan for the inescapable future, but now that it caught up with her she found it surprisingly easy to focus on what little she could do. The things she had to do.

 

Keep cover.

 

Keep an eye out.

 

Keep moving.

 

The future would keep coming and she would keep doing what she had to.

 

She suspected that this reaction was, in part, the fault of shock, and that once she reached a place where she could afford to freak out she might. But for now she couldn’t afford it, so she didn’t, instead focusing on moving forward through the woods.

 

The forest was huge and made of cliffs. They traversed a path a few feet wide, a wall on their right and a steep drop off on their left. A river could be heard somewhere below them, off to the left. Renee wanted to avoid it, if possible. Too flat and exposed. Too large of a chance that they would encounter a drone, that someone would spot her before she could make her illusion work on them, that somehow something would go even more wrong than everything already was.

 

She also wanted to go to it, was convinced on some deep instinctual level that the water was safety. She wished her brain understood the power of modern technology. Or the fact that half her gills didn’t work.

 

Vin wanted to go to it for no reason other than having never seen a river before. He wasn’t passionate enough about seeing the river to actually fight her, for which she was grateful, but he had been rather whiny about it. The bickering was strangely relaxing, bringing with it a comforting familiarity. It was almost as if they had never left, like they had never escaped and were just bullshitting each other in their small communal area. It was strange to find comfort in her past, but at least then she had known what she was striving for outside of the vague need to survive, at least then she specific goals to work towards. Even if her solutions had been, at times, highly unrealistic, there had been the feeling of having time to work things out, the luxury of letting things be a problem for her future self.

 

Well now she was the future self. Now she had to deal with it. And she would, she just had to break it down. This was manageable.

 

They would need food, or they would die.

 

They would need shelter, or they would risk getting ill and dying.

 

They would need to find a way to get Tyrone out of Charlie or ze would die.

 

And after she solved the problems of the present then they could try and figure out a more long term strategy.

 

Shelter was the smallest problem presently. The cliffs were still littered with openings, even as far out as they were. They weren’t that warm, but they were dry enough and Tyrone could probably keep things warm while they slept.

 

Cooking was also not a problem - magic gave ample sources of fire. They just needed something edible. Fall was harvest season, so if they could find a farm they might be able to take plenty for themselves. However they were no signs of an edge of the woods outside of the landfill, which was huge, full of treacherous terrain, and largely without cover. She had to assume that the food bars would run out before they found any convenient replacement source. Foraging while they moved would probably be the best option, but she wasn’t familiar with the local flora and was positive that Vin wasn’t either. She would have to ask Charlie and Tyrone if they knew anything. Charlie probably didn’t, ze grew up in the same area she had, and presumably were mostly familiar with the same subtropic plant life that this place lacked.

 

She could possibly modify a water-seeking spell to locate food. Experimental magic wasn’t the best solution for a dire situation, but since they still had things they knew to be edible it would at least be easy enough to test, so it was unlikely that it would do anything worse than not work.

 

And experimental magic brought her back to Charlie.

 

She had no idea what to do about Charlie.

 

She wasn’t even sure what Tyrone was. Pyrogeist didn’t seem to fit with what the guards, what Dana - a name she should remember, someone who could become a scapegoat if this became public and could possibly be blackmailed - was saying. Any sort of ghost wouldn’t really make sense with what she understood their motives to be, anyway.

 

And even if Tyrone got out, they still had Charlie’s skin, which could apparently be deadly. Renee really had no idea on the specifics of how that worked, but it did mean that even if they could get Tyrone out they would have to be very careful.

 

Then again, if they got Tyrone out he might just kill everyone involved.

 

Renee wasn’t sure how she felt about that. On one hand, the whole operation absolutely needed to be stopped, but... That was a lot of people. And how many of them were even aware of the full extent of what was going on? They were working in a building that put great effort into looking abandoned, so surely they had to have some idea, right? It was absolutely better them than her, but she still felt rather uncomfortable with the idea of it.

 

But sometimes the best available outcome is one you’re uncomfortable with. An outcome where everything was shut down by any means possible was still better than one where more children were taken. They didn’t exactly have many options.

 

And she still didn’t know what to do about Charlie.

 

“Hey! Renee,” Vin exclaimed, jarring her from her thoughts, “look at that! I think it’s an opossum! A real possum!”

 

The small animal frozen in a bush that he was pointing at was indeed, to the best of Renee’s knowledge, an opossum.

 

“Are you going to point out every bit of wildlife that we pass?”

 

“Probably. But come on! The myth, the meme, the mayhem.” The marsupial huddled away from Vin’s emphatically gesturing hands. “They look a lot less intimidating in reality. It’s pretty cute, actually.”

 

“Memes aren’t really the best places to get accurate information about animals, you know.”

 

“Memes are objectively the best places to learn anything. Accuracy is overrated,” Vin said. “Hey do you think I could catch it? It is holding still.”

 

Renee smiled. “It’s going to flee the moment you move closer.”

 

“How fast can it be? It’s only like, a foot long.” It fled as he moved a step closer. “Holy shit those things can haul ass! On such tiny legs too. Renee, I think I love opossums? Can we get one please?”

 

He walked towards where the possum had disappeared into the bushes.

 

“Who is this ‘we’?” Renee tilted her head. “If you have it in you to domesticate a wild animal I certainly won't stand in your way, but I will have no part in this tomfoolery.”

 

“I’m obviously talking about Charlie and me.” Vin looked around the ground. “Ze is against eating animals, that’s pretty much the same thing as wanting any potential pet, right?”

 

Charlie turned towards Vin at the sound of zir name, blinking. Ze was a ways ahead, apparently not having noticed that Renee and Vin had stopped until now.

 

“Yep.” Vin said. “That right there is the face of someone just dying for some possum love. I gotta do this, Renee. Gotta do it for the kid.”

 

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news but I doubt it is still on the ground where you can get at it.”

 

“Hey Renee?” Vin asked. “Can opossums use knives?”

 

“Please don’t arm the local fauna.”

 

“What? I’m not going to give an opossum a knife, they’re blind. It would be crazy irresponsible. You’d need to get them like, a seeing knife dog and those be crazy expensive yo.” He shook his head. “No I’m just asking ‘cause someone went and carved a thing into this tree and if we’ve eliminated the possum that means that there might be actual people around here somewhere.”

 

“This area is rather remote but people get pretty much everywhere. Can you tell me how old it looks?”

 

“It looks like a tree with a picture on it. If you want anything more than that you should look at it yourself.”

 

Renee sighed. “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to squeeze through the bushes. Things have been scratchy enough as it is.”

 

“Shouldn’t you be able to like, shapeshift or some junk?” Vin asked. “I thought naga could turn into almost humans.”

 

“First of all,” Renee said, “naga are a very diverse group with a wide array of magical abilities. Saying naga can shapeshift is like saying naga have wings ormultiple heads - not a lie per say, but hardly a safe assumption about any specific individual. Secondly: although I am theoretically capable of shapeshifting, I am physically incapable of staying in an alternative form for any length of time. Naga aren’t werewolves - we keep any injuries they might have while shifting, which in my case means that my gil damage gets incorporated into my trachea, and an almost-human without a functional windpipe is about as pleasant to be as an almost-aquatic salamander with only one functional gil set. So it is my lot in life to remain as I am, bound to legglessness and landlocked.”

 

“Okay that sucks now are you going to look at this jacked up bark or what?”

 

Renee slivered over the bushes, crushing them under her torso, and looked at the tree in question. Carved deeply and cleanly into the bark were two stars, mirrored on the same horizontal plane. One was about twice the size of the other.

 

**Oh!**

 

Charlie had returned to the group and stood behind Renee.

 

**We’re actually in luck for once. I know that symbol. It’s used by an organization that frequently deals with fugitives to designate the locations of shelters they set up. If we go the direction the larger star is pointing we should be able to find someplace safe.**

 

“It looks like it was covered somewhat recently.” Renee said. “If it were old the cuts wouldn’t look anywhere near as clean.”

 

“Are stars a normal thing to carve into trees? I thought people normally stuck to their names and dicks and junk.”

 

“This feels like it would have a very specific meaning to whoever would be in the know.” Renee traced over it with her finger. “It isn’t one I’m familiar with, and since more secretive groups tend to share information in person that’s hardly surprising.”

 

“It kinda looks familiar to me actually,” Vin said. “Can’t place it though.”

 

**Charlie.**

 

_?_

 

**Could you actually tell them what I said? It’s kinda important.**

 

_¯\\_(ツ)_/¯_

 

Charlie repeated what Alcor had said. Ze had no idea if it was them talking or Alcor, but the information was shared which is what mattered.

 

“Right, I know where I’ve seen that symbol before!” Vin snapped his fingers. “This organization wouldn't happen to be a cult, would it? Cause that’s almost identical to the symbol for some demon.”

 

Renee turned to face Vin. “How do you know that?”

 

“I wasn’t joking about half the moon being in some cult. My buddy isn’t even part of it but when she’s hosting our convos locally the symbol still pops up every now and again.”

 

“How come you get to learn things about actual demons but I can’t even read the news? This is utter bullshit.”

 

“Probably because they knew I wasn’t actually going to try and use that information for anything. It’s not like I know how to summon a demon, just that one exists and that the moon demon apparently likes stars.” Vin shrugged. “Anyway, if he’s vouching for them I’ll trust the weird demon guys.”

 

“Do I really need to point out how utterly suspicious this is? A demonic cult specifically trying to attract fugitives - people who no one will notice if they go missing - to secluded areas with the promise that no one will be able to find them? Or the similar concerns with someplace as difficult to access and unregulated as the moon.”

 

“Hey, I also wasn’t kidding when I said the cult was weird in a chill way. They’re less like a cult and more like a slightly too invested fanclub. They don’t kill people, it’s like one of their core tenets. Apparently the demon flips out when it happens. Only it’s permitted to do that, I guess.” Vin shrugged. “Anyway I kinda wanna visit this place and if it was full to the brim of murder cultists I’m pretty sure my intuition would be screaming at me.”

 

Renee turned to Charlie. “Do you happen to know if this cult would be inclined to keep a stocked pantry in their shelters?”

 

**Generally yeah. Unless someone else was just staying there.**

 

Charlie nodded.

 

“If we die I’m blaming the two of you entirely.” She said, and slivered toward where the arrow was pointing.

 

There were actually quite a few trees with the carving on them - each tree lead to another. Eventually the chain terminated at what appeared to be another cliff face. There were five leaves arranged in a star pattern in front of the cliff, with a small rock slightly offset from them in a way that strongly resembled the symbol that led them to it. The leaf strewn ground made the arrangement was quite subtle; if they hadn’t been looking for something they never would have noticed it.

 

**So to cause the door to open you gotta put the rock into the leaf cluster. How long you betting till they figure it out?**

**I’m guessing Renee refuses to touch anything until she fully analyses the enchantment on the leaves and Vin get’s to distracted by squirrels to try anything.**

 

Charlie nudged the rock onto the leaves with zir foot.

 

With a hum just on the edge of audible, a rectangle of wall slid backwards and sideways, revealing a large room behind it.

 

**What’d you do that for? That was going to be entertaining to watch.**

 

_¯\\_(ツ)_/¯_

 

**That really isn’t an answer, you know.**

 

_¯\\_(ツ)_/¯_

 

“You should probably try to be more careful when dealing with magic from a largely unknown source,” Renee said. “I could have at least determined the nature of the enchantment before we messed with it.”

 

**See? She was actually prepared to spend the better part of an hour taking apart a simple trigger spell. She probably wouldn’t have even learned what it triggered.**

**Half the fun of a puzzle is watching others chase dead ends and spend way too long on pointless paranoia. You roleplay, you should know that.**

 

 _:_ _/_

 

**You’re not really as fun to talk to like this.**

 

_¯\\_(ツ)_/¯_

 

The room’s interior was large; it could probably reasonably accommodate a troll. It could definitely accommodate three teens. It was fairly sparsely furnished, having a large bed in one corner, a couch, a small shrine, and a small kitchenette taking up roughly a quarter of the space. There was also an open door on the far wall with a squat toilet and no apparent room for anything else behind it.

 

The door automatically slid shut behind them. If they hadn’t just entered through the side of a cliff they never would have guessed that the room was in a cave. The walls were smooth, and with their pastel yellow paint job they looked every bit like part of a normal building. The wooden floors were dull and slightly warped, the forces of time and use spreading them and pushing them out of alignment. The lack of windows was made up for by large landscape paintings covering the walls. A soft warm glow illuminated the space from recessed lights in the ceiling.

 

It was cozy, and far more normal than a cave safe house set up by a cult had any right to be.

 

Renee immediately investigated the shrine. It was positioned on a black dresser that, Renee quickly found, was full of a wide variety of clothing and not any sort of spell reagents or dark paraphernalia. The shrine was a simple one. Inlaid in gold in the center were the same two starred symbol from before, only modified so the larger star had two smooth protuberances that curved around the smaller one. There was a circle of bloodstones around it, with five candles evenly spaced throughout the circle. Two bowls, one empty and one full of water, were positioned on either side of the circle. There was a note under the empty bowl.

 

“Take what you need,” it read, “and leave an offering if you are comfortable doing so. Freshly cooked food is traditional, but anything crafted or loved can do. Set the offering in the bowl and light the candles. Don’t be concerned if nothing happens, our Star can be a fickle one.

“For as long as the rock is in place, you will be left alone. Put it back as it was when you are ready to move on. You may stay as long as you need, but keep in mind that, if you are pursued, outside of the blessings of our beloved Star there is nothing here to ensure your protection.

“If you have not already, please disable any electronics for the duration of your stay.

“Good luck in your travels, and may the Dreamer’s Star give you his blessings.”

 

The note was repeated in three different languages.

 

“Are we actually sure that this is a demon cult?” Renee asked, while rummaging through one of the clothing drawers. “Because I have read things from the circles of small gods significantly more threatening than this.”

 

There was a small click, and all light was gone, like it were fleeing a well trained seeing-knife dog.

 

“Hey Renee!” came Vin’s voice. “There’s this button here and I can control the lights!”

 

“You have a friend who lives on the moon and yet light switches are some remarkable thing?”

 

“Well you have to admit, it is a very enlightening technology.”

 

Renee placed her face in her cupped hands as Vin rapidly cycled the lights.

 

“So. There’s a kitchen.” She said. “One could presume there would be some actual food stored there, correct?”

 

“Lettuce hope so.”

 

“You know what else is here?” Renee asked, randomly opening a cupboard and taking note of the neatly stacked pans inside.

 

“What’s that?” Vin was grinning.

 

“A door.” Renee pulled a wrapped block of noodles from a different cupboard.

 

“What, are my puns really that unpalatable?” He headed into the kitchen after her.

 

Renee stopped in front of the pan cupboard. “The creation of language was a mistake.”

 

“All this talking when we could be cooking is a missed cake.” Vin picked up the noodles Renee had selected and inspected the packaging.

 

Renee rooted through the first cupboard and after some consideration grabbed a medium sized saucepan. “Why are you like this?”

 

“I wish I could tell you, but I donut dough.” He unwrapped the noodles.They were thin and tightly packed together.

 

“Do you actually have a punny response to everything I might say?” Renee asked, setting the pan on a hotplate sitting on the counter.

 

“You beater bay leaf I do.” Vin said, and took a bite from the block of noodles.

 

Vin started coughing, and quickly lost his bite of noodles.

 

“Wow, I think these were really designed for people with teeth,” he said. “Or maybe just for smaller bites?”

 

He nibbled more successfully on the edge of the block.

 

“They’re designed to be cooked first!” Renee cried. “They’re supposed to be soft.”

 

“Really?” Vin said. “‘Cause these are pretty great honestly. It’s like a stick you can eat, Renee.”

 

“Noodles are hot and soft and wonderful. Not a dry pointy hellscape in your mouth.”

 

“A stick. You can eat.” He dramatically spread his wings. “Like nature herself realized the grievous error in her inedible stick agenda and came down in a maelstrom of plants and tiny animals and junk to bless us with the perfect mouthfeel. And you’re telling me that I need to look her in the eyes and spit in her good will and heart with the words ‘no, I’ll take them soft, please’?”

 

“I’m pretty sure it’s bad for your stomach to eat it raw,” she said, tearing the packaging off of a second block.

 

“Lots of things are bad for you, Renee. Ignoring everything your doctor has said to live in the woods with a pun-spewing weirdo and a dying possessed kid is bad for you. Sometimes you just gotta look the consequences square in the eyes and do it anyway.”

 

“Well, I’m cooking mine.” Renee put her noodles in the pot. “And when I’m done you’re welcome to see what noodles are actually supposed to be like.”

 

**Um.**

**Charlie?**

 

_?_

 

**I don’t suppose you are in any way up to actually verbally communicating right now?**

**Because she didn’t actually put any water in that pot, and I would rather this place doesn’t burn down for several reasons.**

 

_…_

 

Charlie silently walked over to the hotplate Renee was using, took the pot, removed the foil spice packet from the noodles, and filled it with water.

 

“Charlie?” Renee asked, “what are you doing?”

 

Charlie set the pot back on the hotplate and handed Renee the discarded packaging, pointing purposely at the instructions.

 

“Oh.” She covered her face with a hand. “I didn’t realize that someone might think to include instructions on something so simple. This would probably be easier if I hadn’t gotten banned from the kitchen so quickly after getting to the foster home.”

 

“I’ve never been in a kitchen before in my memorable life!” Vin chipped in. “And let me tell you, this kitchen thing is more than living up to all that hype no one ever once gave it.”

 

“Oh, if I had known that you wanted some kitchen hype I could have told you all about my experience finding a copy of the anarchist cookbook and starting a massive fire,” Renee said. “It was spectacular and only a little traumatizing.”

 

“Oh wow, edible sticks have nothing on that.” Vin’s crest fell dramatically. “Now I’m disappointed in this whole thing. Thanks Renee.”

 

“I do what I can.”

 

The noodles finished cooking fairly quickly. They were a bit gummy and overcooked, but the spice packet covered most imperfections in the overpowering taste of salt.

 

After eating, inventory was taken, mostly by Renee. The kitchen was stocked entirely with non-perishables. On top of noodles and rice there was dry fruit, canned goods, granola bars, tea, vitamins, and various nutrition powders. There were also dehydrated baking mixes, which seemed a little odd but not any more than the existence of the safehouse in general.

 

There was clothing for most body shapes and types, and although very little of it seemed new everything was in much better condition than anything randomly found while messing around in a landfill. They didn’t have anything proper for covering Renee’s lower torso, but this was hardly surprising as proper naga skirts had to be carefully tailored to not fall off or make it hard to actually slither places. But it was still nice to have a sweater that fit properly and didn’t smell like mildew.

  
The bottom drawers of the dresser were full of board games. Alcor was the only one who recognized any of them, so he picked one through Charlie for them to play as they unwound from the day’s earlier excitement and tried to figure out what to do about the future.


	3. Chapter 3

_ Magi Hurtzog, _

 

_ Please excuse the primitive nature of this notice. Conventional means of communication are to be assumed compromised.  _

 

_ We are contacting you with an offer we believe to be of special interest to you. A creature, one you’ve expressed significant interest in facing in the past, is in a position of extreme weakness. This window of opportunity will be very short lived, and it is paramount that the situation be contained and controlled before it closes.  _

 

_ We are willing to pay tenfold your normal rate for taking care of an S-class entity. _

 

_ If you wish to pursue this opportunity, please get to the coordinates on the back of this sheet as soon as you are able.  _

 

_ Thank you for your consideration. _

 

* * *

 

“I think I’m picking up on something,” Renee said, the dowsing rod she made tugging on her arms gently.

 

“Oh, is it the river?”

 

“Vin, this points to food, not water.”

 

“Could it point to the river anyway? I still really want to see a river.”

 

“Sure, we’ll just eat the river.” She flicked her wrist. “It would sustain us for at least the time it would take us to get caught for hanging out somewhere that exposed.”

 

“Oh, hold the phone, Renee.” Vin stopped walking and put a hand to his forehead. “I’m getting some future vision going down. We gotta go to the river, or uh, we’ll like die or some shit. So I’m cool either way but I figured maybe you might want to head riverward?”

 

“How could I ever manage without you?”

 

“He’s a helper,” Charlie said.

 

Charlie was feeling a lot better than the day before. Or, not better, because Charlie hadn’t been feeling particularly bad per se, but more normal. Or, not more normal, because normally ze wasn’t walking on heavily blistered feet with an awful pressure filling zir head, normally ze didn’t have a deep exhaustion weighing down zir bones so soon after waking, normally ze didn’t have aches in every muscle like a thousand toothless hounds were clamping down on them with powerful jaws. Real. Charlie was feeling a lot more real than the day before.

 

As pain blossomed along the sole of zir foot, Charlie couldn’t help but regret exactly how real ze felt today. Dissociation was easier to deal with. 

 

“I’m the best helper,” Vin chirped. “Goddamn fifth time nominee of the helper of the year award right here, and this time I’m in it to win. Going to be so helpful you won't know what to do with yourself, ‘cause I’ll already be doing it for you. Gonna unleash the goddamn helpocalypse on the unsuspecting masses, getting cats out of trees and old ladies across the street until everyone is slightly grateful but mostly rightfully afraid of my apparently limitless ability to arrive from seemingly nowhere with unasked-for assistance.”

 

They followed the rod’s pull as much as they could through the thick woodland.

 

“Hey, Charlie?” Vin asked.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“What’s your deal, anyway? You still got some miraculously helpful family somewhere that you could deus ex machina outta your ass or are you another orphan or what?”

 

“Vin!” Renee cried.

 

“What?”

 

“You can’t just pry into someone’s past like that,” she said with crossed arms.

 

“Maybe you can’t,” Vin said, “but I can and did.”

 

“No, it’s okay,” Charlie said. “I don’t mind talking about it. I do have some family, but I don’t imagine they could be helpful here. My sister’s the only one I’ve ever really talked to, and she’s younger than I am.”

 

“She from the foster home too?” Vin asked.

 

“No, she lives with my parents.”

 

“Wait, you still have parents?” Vin cocked his head. “Why are you living in a home then?”

 

“It’s a foster home, not like, a dead parent club.” Charlie shrugged. “Lots of us still have living parents somewhere. Mine gave me up to the State when I was a baby. I’m guessing they probably got testing and decided they didn’t want to deal with a child with Autism? We’ve never talked so I’m not sure.”

 

“What the actual fuck?” Vin exclaimed. “Is that even legal?” 

 

“Well yeah,” Charlie said, “you can give up a kid for pretty much any reason. They don’t want people killing their kids to get out of parenthood or whatever. It’s probably for the best for me; I can’t imagine what it would be like to be raised by people who treat the way I act as some great burden. And I like living in the home. The kids there are nice and I like the caretakers, even if we did tend to be understaffed.”

 

“So…” Vin grinned slyly. “I guess you could say that the home fostered good feelings in you?”

 

“Oh lordy,” Renee sighed.

 

“Living there really filled me with end _ orphans _ .” Charlie grinned back.

 

“Charlie.” Renee turned to zir with a hand over her heart. “Charlie no. You were supposed to save me from this madness, not become one with it.”

 

“Well,” Charlie said slowly, “maybe you should have been more sans parent about your anti-pun agenda.”

 

Vin opened his beak widely.

 

“I have been perfectly explicit about my anti-pun agenda, so much so that it has become synonymous with my very being. No longer Renee Etheridge, I have become Renee Funslayer, Hater of Puns. She with Fury Most Righteous for the Lowest Humor. The only conceivable way I could possibly have been any clearer was if I broke out of our solitary vigil to custom order a massive, illuminated billboard reading ‘please stop’.”

 

“So you could say you really want to see them all ex _ pun _ ged?” Vin’s tail bobbed rapidly. 

 

“Without impunity,” Renee said, “in the most punctual manner possible.”

 

“Don’t you mean punceivable?” Vin asked.

 

“What? Why would I mean such a thing? Did you not hear my earlier statement? About the names, and the billboard?” Renee asked, almost sounding hurt. “I have been nothing but punctilious about my disdain for such an awful form of humor.”

 

“Look, we get that you absolutely, definitely hate puns,” Vin said. “No need to puntificate about this.”

 

“Not to change the subject... ” Charlie stopped. “While actually yes to change the subject because I really don’t have the punseverance to compete here, but do either of you know where we are? Like, geographic ways?”

 

“Oh that’s easy,” Vin chirped. “We’re in the woods.”

 

“If memory serves,” Renee said, “I would guess we’re somewhere in the Midwest. I vaguely remember this being what the forest regions looked like there. It has been a long time since I was moving around the continent, though.”

 

“You use to travel a lot?” Vin asked. “I didn’t know that.”

 

“I’m not sure ‘travel’ is really the word I would use,” Renee said. “It implies a certain degree of consent and knowledge that I utterly lacked at the time.”

 

“Oh yeah,” Charlie said. “Didn’t you end up dragged all over the continent through preternatural trafficking or something?”

 

“...Yes.” She said flatly. 

 

“Oh, is that not a thing I should have blurted?” Charlie stared at the ground ahead of zir. “I’m sorry.”

 

“No,” she sighed, “it’s alright. You’re not wrong, it’s why I was at the foster home to begin with, and the main reason no serious effort was made to return me to my original parents. I was too young to remember them at the time, and could have originated from pretty much anywhere. It’s quite likely they either ended up in trafficking rings as well or died. Either way, the ambiguity of my origin combined with my difficult attitude and the fact my gills were badly mutilated meant that there weren't exactly lines of possible extended family desperate to claim me.”

 

“Hey, what’s all this?” said Vin. “I didn’t know you came from the pet ring.” 

 

“Well it isn’t exactly the first thing I like to tell people.” She cleared her throat. “Ah, Mx. Hypothetical, is it? That’s a nice name. I, too, have a very nice name, but first let me tell you all about my awful traumatic childhood.”

 

“How come ze gets to know?” Vin whined.

 

“Because young children, and for that matter overworked caretakers, have absolutely no regards to the idea of personal privacy.”

 

“This is bullshit,” Vin declared. “You know all about my tragic backstory.”

 

“What is your tragic backstory?” said Charlie. “Since we’re all sharing anyway.” 

 

“Can’t tell you that.” Vin shrugged. “If anyone were to know my Tragic Backstory it would weaken its value as a secret. As it stands right now, it isn’t known and has high emotional significance. I could get some huge favors for something like that. Don’t quote me but I heard that if you earn enough secret points there’s a guy who will give you a stuffed walrus the size of a car.”

 

“You just said that Renee knows it, though.”

 

“Renee already knows everything so it doesn't really matter.”

 

“It fits nicely with how Vin knows nothing,” Renee said. “It’s astounding that it’s actually possible to communicate in a way that passes along absolutely no information. Scientists are baffled. I’m almost ashamed to be an accessory in the deprivation of their ability to enlighten the world with answers.”

 

“Crime of the fucking year right there,” Vin said. “If you don’t turn around to turn my sorry ass in this minute I have half a mind to report you.”

 

“You have a whole half a mind?” Renee said with mock surprise. “Astonishing, I was estimating it to be a much lower fraction.”

 

“Hey, I never said it was my mind,” Vin said. “It could be like, half a mosquito mind. Fucker thought she could take my sweet, sweet blood juice? Hell no, now I got her brain. Or, at least I have half of it.”

 

“What happened to the other half?”

 

“She couldn’t pay off her college debt so some loan sharks repossessed it.”

 

“Such are the inescapable ways of Nature.” Renee lowered her head with her hand over her heart. “Only she would be so cruel that no desperate plea or hasty flight could save the debt-ridden. The world will soon forget this innocent soul, but within us she will live on, for nothing save Time itself can rid us of our precious memories. The times we shared, the laughs we had, the tears we shed, these things we will carry forever more, and through them we will strive to carry her on, just as she strived to carry your sweet, sweet blood juice.”

 

“I’ll treat this new duty with the utmost importance it deserves,” Charlie said, somewhat distantly. Ze felt really dizzy and hot. 

 

“I’m glad someone’s taking that task head on ‘cause I’m going to forget about her within the hour.” Vin said.

 

“So soon would you forget? Have you no heart?” Renee said sharply. “She lost her very life trying to ease your burdens of blood-having, and you would willfully abandon her memory to Time’s piercing arrows? With such callousness resting in your soul you might as well wield that awesome and terrible bow yourself, and slay our memories of her as you so ruthlessly slayed her body.”

 

Charlie stumbled forward, catching zirself before ze fell completely, and took a few shaky steps forward. 

 

“Are you okay?” Renee asked.

 

“Well, I’m fine,” Alcor said. “But Charlie just checked out.”

 

“What do you mean ‘just checked out’?” Renee asked, leaning close to Charlie’s body. “What happened?”

 

“I mean ze was exerting control over the body, and now ze isn’t,” Alcor said.

 

“Holy shit did Charlie just fucking die?” Vin asked. “Please tell me that Charlie didn’t just die.”

 

“What? No!” exclaimed Alcor. “If Charlie was dead, why would I be wasting my time inhabiting this flesh sack?”

 

“Hey man, I don’t know, maybe you’re into that?” Vin shrugged. “I’m in no position to judge; wasting time and inhabiting a flesh sack are two of my only skills.”

 

“As far as I can tell ze’s as fine as can be expected for the circumstances.”

 

“What did you even do?” Renee asked.

 

“Excuse me?” Alcor leaned forward towards Renee. “What did I do? I don’t know, maybe catch the kid before ze fell and hurt zirself even more?”

 

“People don’t just randomly faint!” she cried, pulling her tightly balled fists to her chest. “Not that this was exactly random, not that being sedated for a solid week and then going straight to walking for hours is probably good on the body, not that ze was a paragon of health in the first place. Not that we didn’t already know that ze is dying. So you’re right, I’m sorry, it doesn’t really make sense for this to be your fault. Ze is just literally dying, that’s all! And it’s happening faster than I thought it would and I sure don’t know enough about possession to fix this. I don’t know enough about anything to fix this. I don’t even know that this can be fixed.”

 

“Hey. Renee.” Alcor pinched Charlie’s nose and then lay zir palms down. “Charlie isn’t dead yet. There’s a huge difference between fainting and dying. And I know plenty about my own magic. We still have time to fix this.”

 

“Right. Time. We have so much time. What with being hunted and all. And needing to find food and stuff. And - ” she pressed her closed fists against her forehead. “And we’re working on those problems too. One thing at a time; Charlie isn’t dead yet.”

 

She took a deep breath and spread her fingers flat on the exhale. 

 

“You should sit down,” she said to Alcor. “If Charlie’s body is doing badly enough that ze fainted we shouldn’t just keep walking.”

 

Alcor plopped down on a large, moss-covered rock, resting Charlie’s elbows on zir bouncing knees. Stopping felt wrong, almost intolerable. The pace that they had been moving had been frustratingly slow - which was to say that they had been pacing themselves perfectly reasonably for what was potentially a day long walk through difficult terrain, but it was slower than Alcor wanted to be moving. Much slower. And now they had to stop. Probably because this body hadn’t actually slept in two days, and whose fault was that?

 

“Not that I’m saying the dowsing rod won’t work,” Alcor said, “but since we’re concerned about time why don’t we have Vin fly above the tree line and see if he can spot some farms or something?”

 

“Because that’s a thing I can do,” Vin said. “Very first thing they teach you in test subject school (which is for test subjects) is how to fly the fuck away and never look back.”

 

“Just how long were you at the facility?” Alcor asked.

 

Vin shrugged his wings and arms. “Fuck I don’t know, about how long can a bird remember shit? Like I vaguely remember there being a before but I couldn’t tell you anything about it.”

 

“Wow,” Alcor said. “You guys manage to make my childhood look positively enviable.”

 

“What happened to you as a kid?” Vin asked.

 

“Well,” Alcor laughed, “I died, for starters, and then my parents kicked me out because they couldn’t deal with what I had become, and then puberty happened and I was pretty much constantly in pain for awhile… It wasn’t great is what I’m saying.”

 

“Yeah that sounds pretty damn suck,” Vin said.

 

“But you guys…” Alcor shook Charlie’s head. “Damn.” 

 

“So what?” Vin asked. “Suffering ain’t a contest; what you went through sounds shitty as hell. I can’t think of much I’d want less then getting offed without the sweet release of death. And to go through that and then get abandoned? Shit.”

 

“I mean, it wasn’t really their fault. Of course they couldn’t deal with what I had become.  _ I _ couldn’t deal with what I had become. They didn’t sign up for that.”

 

“And you did?” Renee asked pointedly.

 

“I didn’t have anyone intentionally hurting me is what I’m saying,” Alcor said, “and I still had a support network that understood - well - that was aware of what I was going through.”

 

“All I’m saying is that, when it comes down to how shitty a thing was, the intent of the people involved doesn’t really matter,” Vin said. “You were hurt and no amount of well wishes can change that. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it definitely matters if you want to try and unburn those bridges or whatever, but the thing that happened? Abandoning you when you really needed the support? Still shitty.”

 

Alcor sighed. “It doesn’t matter much anyway; that was a long time ago.”

 

“Right,” Vin said, drawing out the word. “You’ve long moved past having shitty things happening in your childhood. Now you can reap the sweet sweet reward of having shitty things happen to you as an adult.”

 

“Hold on,” Alcor straightened Charlie’s back. “I think Charlie might be regaining consciousness.” 

 

* * *

 

Charlie was very confused.

 

Everything shifted. Charlie was sitting now. Why was ze sitting? When did ze sit down? 

 

As Charlie attempted to push zirself up the world spun, less like a top and more like an inexpertly used gyroscope; it didn’t gracefully rotate so much as it wobbled, moving too quickly to be easy to follow but too slowly to hold itself up. The world spun like it was missing the ground more by pure chance than anything else.

 

Sitting down might be a good idea. 

 

Charlie let zir head fall into zir knees. Ze couldn’t figure out how to sit down. There was something in the way of sitting and the knowledge of what, exactly, this might be eluded zir like financial stability from a freshly indebted college student.

 

This was stupid. The fact that this was stupid was the only solid anchor that Charlie had, and ze clung to it like a life preserver. The ground wouldn’t hold still, and that was dumb. Charlie couldn’t figure out how to sit down and if that wasn’t the single most moronic possible outcome of any possible series of events to conceivably transpire then Charlie was perfectly happy with how these past few days had gone. That is to say, the idea of an infinite multiverse had been accepted as a practical fact by the scientific community for centuries, so there was a high chance that any outcome permissible by the laws of physics was, in fact, a reality that was realized somewhere in the vastness of existence. There was a reality where Charlie’s response to the stress of what was happening was to simply lie facedown on the ground, eat some dirt, and try to hand sort passing fire ants by how friendly they looked. There was a reality where it was the fashion to wear highly venomous octopuses as shawls and people used breakdancing as the primary mode of communication. There was a reality where archaic laws and largely ignored voter suppression caused someone whose main experience was going bankrupt to become one of the most powerful people on the planet and everyone just kinda let it happen. There were realities that couldn’t even begin to be sufficiently summarized using the word “stupid”. Realities so senseless and imbecilic that to try and communicate the exact extent of their stupidity would be folly. And yet, somehow, despite this inevitable outcome of probability, Charlie had found the singular moment of peak asininity; right the fuck here and now as ze couldn’t fucking figure out how to sit down. 

 

At least, that’s probably what Charlie would be thinking if zir brain could actually string two sentences together.

 

Charlie needed to get zir head to stop reeling. Zir thoughts spun with no sign of crashing downwards. They spun like an astronaut curling into themself, nauseatingly quickly and growing in speed. Except it was more aggressive than that. It was like zir head was a tumbler that someone put a ball made of nails into. 

 

This was stupid.

 

Charlie’s knees pressed into zir eyes. Take things one at a time. What was in the way of zir sitting?

 

This rock. 

 

Ze couldn’t sit through the rock.

 

The rock that ze was 

 

sitting 

 

on.

 

This.

 

This was  _ stupid. _

 

Okay, now that Charlie had chalked up and solved the world’s most idiotic mystery like ze was the protagonist in a book written for toddlers by someone half a drink away from alcohol poisoning, it was time to actually figure out what was going on.

 

Charlie was still in the woods, obviously.

 

Renee and Vin were stopped. 

 

Renee was talking.

 

And now she was looking at zir expectantly. 

 

Zir thoughts were slightly clearer now. It was less like they were churning and more like there was a thick, heavy fog in zir head. 

 

After a moment of focus Charlie managed to make words happen.

 

“What… What?” ze somehow uttered.

 

“You fainted. Are you feeling alright?”

 

“Oh.” Charlie went quiet. That made sense. The thick fog clouding zir thoughts was dispersing somewhat.

 

“Are you okay?” Renee prompted again.

 

Charlie gave a hollow laugh. “Apparently not? I mean I feel fine - well no. No I don’t feel fine! Everything  _ still _ hurts and it sucks, and I’m really confused right now, but I don’t feel any worse than I did yesterday which is apparently bad enough that I might just randomly faint and I haven’t fainted before and I’m  _ dying  _ and none of us have any idea how to make this better.”

 

Charlie’s hands were flapping agitatedly. “So no, I’m not okay. I’m not physically okay and I’m not okay with what’s going on. I am Not Okay.”

 

**For what it’s worth, if we can get somewhere safe there are some things I can try to test the nature of the binding. Not having any sort of magicore makes things harder, but people did magic without them for a long time.**

 

_ But we’re not going to find a safe place to experiment with magic! They’re not going to stop hunting us and next time we encounter them they’re going to have a real plan and someone who can actually deal with you. _

 

**Oh, they aren’t going to have someone who can deal with** **_me._ ** **They might** **_think_ ** **they do, but if so it’s only because they vastly underestimate my power.**

 

_ Well it’s great to know that you’re going to get out of this just fine. _

 

**Of course I’m going to get out of here just fine. That’s never been a question.**

 

“Things may look pretty bad right now,” Renee said, “but we don’t know that a basic banishment won’t work. I don’t want to act without getting more information, but caution may be driving us to make a mountain out of a molehill.”

 

“...right,” Charlie mumbled.

 

**She is right about that. If this was supposed to be a temporary thing they might not have bothered complicating the banishment process. They clearly didn’t have plans for what to do if we escaped.**

 

_ So if we’re lucky I’ll *just* be a selkie with my skin in hostile hands. Sounds great. _

 

**Right. We really need to find a way to get that back.**

 

_ … _

 

**You got something you want to say, kiddo?**

 

_ what if  _

_ we just surrender?  _

 

**What? You want to go back to the institution that did this to you in the first place?**

 

_i don’t *want*_ _to but it’s kinda feeling like maybe the only way i might get out of this alive._

 

**And then you would be right back in there hands. You know they aren’t going to let you go, right? You’re too much of a liability.**

 

_ if you’re really so powerful, couldn’t you just make them let me go once you’re out of me? _

 

**Banishment rituals generally have the side effect of weakening the banished entity. If they have any competence - and in the interest of caution we must ignore all evidence to the contrary and assume they are somewhat competent - they will take advantage of the ritual to weaken me as much as they can. They’re going to prioritize controlling me, because as far as they’re concerned they are dead if they don’t. They’re going to use you as a method of controlling me, and because they have your coat they have a functional killswitch that I can’t do much about.**

 

_ whatever happened to you being fine no matter what happens? _

 

**I would be fine. They could only weaken me temporarily. I would just need a bit of time, but in that time who knows what would happen to you?**

**It’s entirely possible they want something from me that I can’t deliver.**

**It is very likely that they wouldn’t believe me if I told them that I couldn’t do what they asked of me.**

**And your wellbeing is the one thing they actually have as a bargaining chip.**

**Given time I could absolutely locate your coat and get you as far away from them as is physically possible. But if we were to go back there, I don’t think we would have that time.**

 

_ that makes sense i guess. _

_ so  _

_ i’m just going to die, huh? _

 

**No. We are going to figure this out.**

**Once we get me out of you, things are going to get better, okay?**

**We just need to get me out of you and I can fix this.**

 

_ right _

  
“Hey Vin?” Renee said. “You wouldn’t happen to have any profound feelings of insight as to the nature Charlie’s predicament, would you?”

 

“I got no more clue about what should happen next than a baby dropped in the middle of a courthouse.”

 

“Well, if you’re not feeling anything at all I suspect that we at least have a little time; I’ve been keeping an eye on them and they don’t appear to be making an effort to mobilize at all yet. It seems we might have a bit of breathing room before they make their next move.”

 

“Not that I normally have much more understanding than a baby,” Vin mused. “Like, what kinda magic makes cars stay in the air like that? I have literally no clue. What kinda magic is a differential equation anyway? I don’t know, but damn can I chew on some shiny keys and start crying.”

 

“I’m sorry I’m not more helpful,” Charlie said.

 

“It’s fine,” Vin said. “We can’t all be masters of crying and sticking shit in our glob holes.”

 

“No, I’m serious. You guys both have all this great stuff you can do and I’m just over here dying.”

 

“So?” Vin shrugged. “You’re cool to have around. You actually appreciate my awesome jokes, unlike someone I could name.”

 

“But I’m such an obstacle for you guys!” Charlie cried. “You have such useful abilities and I’m what? Carrying someone in my head. And from what I can tell they’re a lot more interested in containing the two of us than they are you so I’m bringing in extra danger, and I’m slowing you down-”

 

“Do you perform some kinda cost/benefit analysis with all your friends?” Vin said with a laugh. “You’re nice to have around, so I’m happy you're here. Isn’t that why people hang out in the first place?”

 

“You don’t have to earn the right to exist,” Renee said. “I understand it’s hard to distance yourself from an idea so deeply ingrained in our culture, but you deserve survival and freedom.”

 

“Also, you did kinda save our asses yesterday. I mean I guess the guy in your head saved our asses, but he wouldn’t be here without you, so you can probably seize the credit for that if you want. I won’t say nothing about it.”

 

“But -”

 

“Anyway,” Vin said sharply, “you want to talk about ‘useful abilities’? Let me tell you about the utter bullshit that is my thing. So I get these impulses and intuitions, right? But I have no idea what they’re leading towards. I was assuming they were just directly helping me get what I want at any point, but then why did I save you? Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I did, but like, that wasn’t really something I wanted to do at the time. Or was even aware that I could do. So now I’m just kinda hoping that the agenda of whatever forces guide my powers keeps aligning with my own agenda because otherwise I’m fucker than fucked. Oh yeah and also I can sort of see the future but whenever I actually try and control that I apparently look too far and hit blinding city: population pain.”

 

“I’ve never fully understood your grievance with your more passive abilities,” Renee said. “It seems to me that they strongly liken you to the characters in your comics, which I would think you would appreciate.”

 

“What?” Vin said. “Nah. The whole point of those things is if you got powers you gotta use them to like, further society and fight crime and repeatedly destroy some place called ‘New York’. Heroes are selfless people of great virtue and greater destructive power, whereas I have all the destructive potential of a damp paper towel and am a small selfish bird who just wants to use my powers to further my own goal of hiding in the woods forever.”

 

“And,” Renee pointed skyward, “who nobly saved the life of a child using a powerful bomb of his own design.”

 

“What?” Vin narrowed his eyes. “No, that wasn’t what that was about. That was a happy accident, not some dramatic character moment. I blew up some shit and pulled a fire alarm; I didn’t have some soul-shattering revelation about how I have to find a likeminded group of freaks and responsibly destroy some fictional city.”

 

“You just found a likeminded freak and fought back against a nefarious organization.”

 

“Okay, look.” Vin crossed his arms. “I’m not a hero, and - man this really sounds like some reluctant hero bullshit, doesn’t it.”

 

“Just a tad.” Renee smiled.

 

“I can’t be a hero because I’m not willing to be a hero and I’m sure as fuck not willing to play out some shitty overdone trope of some guy being obviously a hero but unwilling to admit that he just stopped some masked tool and is clearly a force for good. I’ve never even seen a guy with a mask.”

 

Renee looked hard at Vin. “Vin. most of the people you’ve ever interacted with have been wearing masks.”

 

“Surgical masks do not count,” Vin said. “It’s gotta be some thin cloth covering the eyes and like, nothing else. It’s not a proper villain mask unless it’s completely fucking useless against anyone who has eyes and more than ten seconds of memory.”

 

“It’s so rare to encounter such humility.” Renee shook her head. “It’s quite a noble trait.”

 

“Nooooope,” Vin said, stretching out the ‘o’ as if he could drown out the rest of the conversation in a single syllable. “I don’t have a single humble bone in my body. I have obstinate denial; it’s an ugly and undesirable trait.”

 

“Honestly it’s rather inspiring,” Renee said.

 

“Your face is rather inspiring.” 

 

“Why, I do believe that I’ve found my muse.” Renee covered her mouth with a hand. “She has long been suffering in the lackluster inspirational drought of my dreary existence, but now she spurs something deep within me.”

 

“What the hell are you talking about?” Vin asked.

 

“If ever a hero were I to know,” Renee spoke clearly.

 

“What are you doing?” Vin asked, concerned.

 

“My dearest friend Vin I would have to show.”

 

“You do not get to write a ballad about me. I refuse.”

 

“To be fair,” Charlie interjected, “she isn’t writing anything.”

 

Vin narrowed his eyes. “Whose side are you on, anyway?”

 

“The greatest intuition that could be,” her voice picked up, leaving no room for interruptions.   
    Saving us from no end of tragedy.     
    With a bomb most mighty and timing rife,   
    He thoroughly saved this here child’s life.    
    And although he will say it’s just fate’s way,    
    From the hero’s path he never will stray."

 

Vin tucked his head under a wing. ”Why are you like this,” he groaned.

 

Charlie looked pointedly at the ground and said, “Wouldn’t ‘with but only a bomb and timing rife’ work better?”

 

“Why, thank you Charlie!” Renee grinned. “That is an undeniable improvement.”

 

“What.” Vin stared at Charlie. “Charlie, what are you doing? You’re supposed to be on my side. Has all our time together meant nothing to you? I thought we were in pun cahoots. Would you really break the sacred bonds of punhootshood for this???”

 

“It seems like you’re the one considering breaking punhootshood over this,” Charlie pointed out.

 

“Charlie. Charlie. Chaaaaarlie.” Vin leaned his long neck back, pointing his head skyward. “Why you gotta be all bringing logic into this. I am but a poor, simple soul, trying my hardest to do what every simple soul is trying to do: make it through this rough life with as few couplets written about me as possible. That’s it. That’s all I want. Not better poetry. Not logic telling me who was really threatening to break what bonds. Just for the number of poems about me to stay at a reasonable, nonexistent amount. Is that too much to ask for, Charlie? Is it?”

 

“Yes,” Charlie said solemnly.    
  


“Is it really?” Vin asked.

 

“It is, absolutely, 100% too much to ask for.” Charlie shook zir head. “Sometimes in this crazy messed up life you get featured in poems, and you just gotta learn to own up to it with grace.”

 

“It sounds like you’re not taking my plight very seriously, Charlie.” Vin narrowed his eyes. “I’m up to my crest in these choice-ass words that have been spewed upon me against my consent, gumming my feathers together like the nasty shit they are, and you’re pinning the blame on me? The problem is that I’m not owning up to it? How would you like it if someone just went out and made a poem about you?”

 

“You know,” Charlie said, “I don’t think I’ve ever thought about that.”

 

“Oh, you’re asking for it,” Vin said. “Keep this up and I’ll show you what it’s like the hard way.”

 

“Oh no.” Charlie widened zir eyes. “I don’t suppose there’s anything I could say to change your mind?”

 

“Nope. This shit’s happening.” Vin cleared his throat.

“There once was a seal whose tuckus,

Made quite an extraordinary  ruckus .

Wow, rhyming is hard,

I’m not a bard.

I’m just gonna say fuck this.”

 

“That was incredible,” Charlie said. “I’m going to get it tattooed on my gravestone.” 

 

‘What?” Vin exlamed. “No, that’s the wrong response. It’s terrible and you’re supposed to hate it. I shouldn’t have to explain this to you, this is like, basic-ass poem reception. You should have learned this in fucking grade school. First day of second grade, teacher comes in and is all ‘hello everyone we’ll do introductions in a moment but first - Poems: They’re awful and you should - holy fuck what the hell is that?”

 

Rotating slowly in front of Vin was a large brown animal suspended from a branch. The webbing that ensnared it was impressively thick and tightly wound. 

 

“I think it’s a deer…” Renee said. “We should be careful; anything large enough to catch deer is either large enough to consider us - or at the very least you two - food, or they’re a person. Or possibly both, I suppose.”

 

“So…” Vin said slowly, “we should keep our eyes out for some very large spiders is what you’re saying.”

 

“That is the basic takeaway here, yes.”

 

“Like, a very large, hairy spider person with thick legs and big eyes?” Vin asked.

 

“Actually that sounds more like a tarantula or possibly a jumping spider,” Charlie said. “Web weavers have thin legs and small eyes, and tend to have less hair.”

 

“Oh. That’s a relief,” Vin said. “I was worried we were looking out for that person over there.”

 

“What ‽ ” Renee squealed, turning quickly to where Vin had gestured. 

 

Looking at the with bemused interest was an arachnimorph. They looked to be on the upper end of middle aged, their carapace mostly covered in short white hair with a few black spots. A grimy t-shirt covering their front was the only clothing they wore. 

 

There was really only one aspect of their appearance that Renee parsed, however.

 

They had goggles on, the kind common in species whose eyes couldn’t handle more compact computational devices. 

 

There was no way they weren’t connected to the Net. 

 

There was no way that the computer hadn’t already identified them. 

 

It was going to notify the facility. 

 

They were going to be found and this time the facility would be better prepared and they wouldn’t be able to escape and…

 

Renee took a deep breath.

 

One thing at a time. They weren’t here yet.

 

Renee moved protectively in front of Vin and Charlie. It was a little late for an illusion - the arachnimorph’s computer would see straight through it anyway. It was a little late for anything, really. She should have been paying more attention. If she had just been fucking around a little less she might have seen this coming and been able to stop it, but no, she had to come up with a dumb poem. Clearly a reasonable use of her energy. Obviously. 

 

Berating herself wasn’t going to help either.

 

She took another breath, and tried to release some of the tension held in her churning guts.

 

Her thoughts wouldn’t stop racing. Wouldn’t stop coming up with the ways everything  would could go worse. But that was fine. They could go ahead and do that if they wanted. She had more important things to focus on. 

 

“Don’t be worrying about little old me now,” the arachnimorph said. Renee couldn’t help but envy how calm they sounded. “I don’t eat demons.”

 

“Well,” Renee said, “I just might eat pesky mortals who interfere with my… business. So have you any wisdom I would advise you to flee.”

 

“Before I eat you,” she continued, “please.”

 

The arachnimorph didn’t appear to be buying it. In fact, they looked a bit like they may have been considering buying it when they first glanced at it from an aisle away but now were investigating it and finding that it was not only a completely different item than they originally thought but it was also gaudily designed, broken and about three times more expensive than expected. They were considering returning some items they had bought just for coming from the same store as it.

 

“Wow, with those kinda mad persuasion skills we need to get you a late night infomercial show. Like, right now. We got mad…” Vin looked around. “Leaves that you could be hawking off as medicinal or something.”

 

“Vin.” Renee glared at him.

 

“Oh, sorry. I mean, I am Vinzel Tharp… um.  Tharpicus. Archdemon of shitty jokes and shittier poetry. Tremble before me and despair, mortal, or face my inescapable tirade of awful words.”

 

“ _ Vin! _ ” Renee hissed.

 

“Excuse me, it’s Tharpicus.” He shook his head. “You gotta fucking immerse yourself in the scenario. Find your demonsona. Become one with it. And then eat them I guess, if that’s what you’re into now?”

 

“Now I may not be an expert on demons,” the arachnimorph said, “but I’m pretty sure they don’t normally walk around in the middle of nowhere reciting poems at each other.”

 

“Well, it turns out you know even less about demons than you thought,” Renee said, almost pleadingly. “Now leave before I make it so you know a lot less about everything.”

 

“You don’t need to be so worried, kid,” they said. “I’m not going to report you.”

 

“You don’t need to do anything,” Renee said. “I’m sure your computer already has.”

 

They laughed. “You think I haven’t disabled that crap? Do I look like I want the government spying on my every move? This thing doesn’t download or upload anything without my say-so.”

 

“Isn’t that, um…” Charlie spoke quiety, looking at the ground, “illegal?”

 

“Hah! Probably. But it’s a dumb law, and what’s the point of living fifty miles away from any cops if you’re going to follow every dumb law, huh?”

 

“I can think of plenty of reasons a law abiding citizen might want to avoid cops,” Renee pointed out. “Especially a preternatural person.”

 

“Fair enough,” they said, walking up to the deer. “Look, I gotta get this guy home. And if you kids wanna follow me and maybe get a meal in you and a roof over your head for the night, well, I won't say nothin’ to no one.”

 

They maneuvered a levitating platform under the deer and cut some webbing with a large knife, causing the deer to drop. Using what looked sort of like an aerosol can, they replaced the broken webbing, jumping several times their own height into the trees to anchor the new web.

 

“The names Marcus, by the way. She/her,” Marcus said. “And if you wanna leave and get as far away from me as ya can I understand. I probably wouldn’t trust me neither. But the invite’s open, if you want it.”

 

And with that she started to walk away, deer carcass following behind like a large and morbid puppy.   


 

“I like her,” Vin declared. 

 

“A living space would probably be a better option than the woods to try and figure out Charlie’s… problem.” Renee said. “But… I don’t know. This doesn’t feel right, to put it mildly.”

 

“Well, I’m following her,” Vin said, and started to do just that.

 

“Vin!” Renee cried out. “We should talk about this first!”

 

“What’s there to talk about?” Vin asked. “You’re going to say that you don’t like it, and go back and forth about how you don’t trust it but it would be nice if it was legit, and there you’re going to end up asking me how I feel about it and I feel like I’m going to follow her, so why bother with all the other stuff?”

 

Renee put a hand over her face. “Weren’t you just talking about how you’re not sure if you can trust the source of your intuition?”

 

“Yeah but let’s be real, we have nothing better to go off of and you were absolutely going to ask me about it anyway.” Vin continued to walk after Marcus. 

 

“Vin!” Renee slithered after him. “Would it kill you to actually think things through for once?”

 

“You’re just mad cause I’m right.”

 

“No, I’m mad because you don’t seem to be taking this seriously at all. You can’t just-” She took a deep breath. “Look, are you sure this is safe?”

 

“I mean, no. But I got a good feeling about it and I want to see where this is going, so…” Vin shrugged. “It’s not like pseudo-randomly meandering through the woods is much better, if we’re gonna be real.”

 

“Charlie?” she asked. “What do you think?”

 

“Um. I’m not great at judging how trustworthy someone is but I think I would much rather sleep on a bed or a couch or something than the ground.” 

 

“Alright. I suppose that’s valid.” She sighed. “Let’s do this, I guess.”

 

“See how much easier everything is when you just admit that I’m right?” Vin asked.

 

“Vin,” she said. “If I admitted you were right all the time we never would have tried escaping.”

 

“And then we wouldn’t have to make all these hard decisions.” Vin spread his fingers widely. “Just imagine how much easier everything would be.”

 

Renee shook her head. “Let’s just catch up with Marcus.”

 

Marcus was pretty easy to catch up to, as she wasn’t exactly racing through the woods. 

 

“Hey, you’re back,” she said. “Think you want to spend the night at my place?”

 

“That does seem to be the plan…” Renee confirmed. “Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

 

“I hope not, ‘cause ya just did.”

 

“I meant an additional question.”

 

“Who am I to stop a terrifying demon from asking me a question?”

 

“It’s about that, actually.” Renee said. “How are you so sure that we’re not demons? It certainly wouldn’t be unheard of for demons to pretend to be something innocuous like some teenagers.”

 

“Kid, the way I see it, if you are a demon, you want something from me or that attempt to scare me off would have been a lot better. And I’m still not an expert in demons but I’m pretty sure going against a demon's plans is a good way to end up dead, especially when you’re as far away from potential help as we are out here. But I’m pretty sure you’re not demons.”

 

“Why is that?” Renee asked.

 

“Cause there’s an old lot not far from here that’s awfully well trafficked for someplace long abandoned, and people don’t put that much effort into hiding something that don’t need to be hid,” Marcus said. “And I know enough about history to know that sometimes classifying entities as A or S class can just be another way of hiding things.”

 

“Maybe they were doing experimentation on demons and we escaped,” Renee said.

 

“I’m pretty sure if three actual demons escaped from, well, anything really, there would be a bit more fireworks than there have been. I don’t see demons as being the ‘quietly slip out during the night’ types.”

 

“You’re probably right about that,” Renee admitted. “Demons aren’t really known for being subtle when angered.”

 

“Um. I have a question too,” Charlie said.

 

“So shoot.”

 

Charlie stared at zir feet. “Why are you using fake webbing to hunt? Aren’t you a jumping spider?”

 

Marcus laughed. “Well I’m a bit old to go chasing things down through the woods, ain’t I? My joints don’t work like they used to, and do you have any idea how much time active hunting takes? I have other things going on in my life.”

 

“But why use webs at all?” Charlie asked.

 

Marcus crossed her arms. “Who ever heard of a spider hunting with a bear trap, huh? It’s ridiculous.”

 

“I mean a bear trap is somewhat analogous to how trapdoor spiders hunt…” Charlie murmured.

 

“Ri-dic-u-lous.” Marcus repeated, stretching each syllable out like a bored child playing with their gum. “But enough about me. Whatcha kids doing wandering through the woods, anyway?”

 

“Reciting bad poetry at each other, apparently,” Charlie said. 

 

“I’m not sure it would be wise to share the circumstances that brought us here,” Renee said.

 

“Oh man, that isn’t what I was trying to-” Marcus shook her head. “Look, don’t tell me anything incriminating. I don’t wanna know how you got here, I don’t want to know where you came from, I don’t want to know. I was more of wondering, in the vaguest terms possible, what you were wandering through the woods towards.”

 

“We don’t really-” Renee said hesitantly.

 

“We don’t know a fucking thing, my guy,” Vin interrupted.

 

“We do, in fact, know quite a few things,” Renee said.

 

“That’s fair. We know lots of pointless bullshit. Like, just a whole fuckton of bullshit. Fertilize half the continent with all this shit we’ve got hoarded in our brainpans. We just have no clue what the hell we’re doing.”

 

“We do have a plan,” Renee said. “It’s just… not very fleshed out.”

 

“And what’s that then?”

 

“This seeks food,” she said, holding up her dowsing rod. “The hope was that it would lead us to a farm or something and we could… make things work from there.”

 

“Well, good luck with that. You’re in the middle of a pretty sizable national park,” Marcus said. “Ain’t no farms for miles. Heck, outside of a the ol’ landfill and few pockets of private land there ain’t nothing but trees for about fifty miles.”

 

“Well, that’s a pretty reasonable distance to walk in a day, or two if we’re being slow. We aren’t in imminent risk of starvation; last night we found a place that had supplies.”

 

“You found that old cult hideout?” Marcus said. “I should probably go restock it then, huh?”

 

“You’re a cultist?” Renee said, as naturally as she could manage.

 

“Heck no. Demons are already too big for their britches, last thing they need is worship,” Marcus said. “The Circle are good people though, demon aside, and if they’re willing to pay me hard cash just to keep a room in good condition, I’d be a fool to say no. And my mother didn’t raise no fool. She raised two. But I ain’t one of them.”

 

“We really appreciate your efforts,” Renee said. “Last night was by far the most restful night we’ve had since, well, since stuff you don’t want to know about. And we really needed the supplies.”

 

“Aw, it weren’t nothin,” Marcus said, flicking one of her wrists. “But going back to your ‘plan’: do you have any defenses against surveillance? ‘Cause most of the farms in the area that grow things that can be eaten without processing do keep cameras about.”

 

“Unfortunately we don’t.” Renee’s arms dropped. “When we entered the woods we had pretty much nothing. I do know a thing or two about anti-surveillance camouflage, but I don’t have the materials to actually utilize my knowledge.”

 

“Have I seriously not put any makeup in the safehouse? I don’t know how I could ever make up for that mistake.” Marcus laughed at her own shitty joke. “Seriously though, I got some at my place that you can use.” 

 

“Really?” Renee said. “I cannot overstate how much I appreciate your kindness. This is actually starting to feel like something that could work.”

 

“Pshaw, it ain’t no thing. I’m just doing what I’d want someone to do to me if I were in a bad spot,” Marcus said. “Anyway, I’m sure you already know, but you’re going to want to be careful not to get caught by any people while wearing it; most designs that break up the face enough to make you invisible to a computer make you stick out like a sore thumb to a person.”

 

“I’m not terribly worried about getting caught by a person,” Renee said. “I’m pretty skilled with illusions; I should be able to keep anyone from noticing us. Of course, such protections are dependent on my ability to actually notice someone before we’ve tripped over them, so if current historical precedent holds it will be about as useful as a torn screen door in keeping us safe.”

 

“Ohh, sick burn,”  Vin said. “But, protip: you’re generally supposed to save such savagery for other people. Otherwise it’s just kinda sad.”

 

“And you’re generally supposed to keep an eye out for strangers when you’re on the lam, so I think it’s safe to say that our circumstances have already proven to be just a tad outside of the generality.”

 

“Eh, don’t worry about it so much,” Marcus said. “You’ve been walking for how long - don’t actually answer that I don’t wanna know - but you’ve been walking for however long it’s been and you finally let your guard down. Well, you weren’t expecting to run into no one in the woods. That’s a pretty reasonable assumption. Not many people out here to run into. If you were raiding some farm though, I’m guessing you’d be more careful. You can’t be on high alert all the time.”

 

“But there  _ are _ people out here,” Renee said, “even if they're aren’t many, and running into any of them could prove disastrous. It’s better to be unnecessarily cautious then get caught.”

 

“Yeah, but you’re not the only one responsible for us staying all safe like,” Vin said. “I’m pretty sure I would notice if we were about to get caught.”

 

“He has a point,” Marcus said. “Six eyes are better than two. And I’m not saying it would hurt to be a bit more quiet and alert, but if you’re going to let your guard down, here’s the place to do it.”

 

“... Right,” Renee said, sounding about as convinced as someone who made the mistake of opening their door for some Jehovah’s Witnesses and just wanted to go back to their dinner without being rude.

 

“So, where are we going, anyway?” Vin asked. “Is it… there?”

 

“Yep, I live in a tree. You solved my house puzzle, congratulations,”  Marcus said. “Anyway it’ll be a while. My place is about an hour and a half away still.”

 

“Wow, seriously?” Vin whined. “That’s like, an hour and a half more than I wanted to walk.”

 

“Vin,” Renee said pointedly, “we were planning on walking all day.”

 

“Which is about a day more than I wanted to walk,” Vin said. “I just didn’t say anything ‘cause I knew you’d be all ‘Vin who cares how sore your legs are we must adhere to the plan or we’ll like, die or some shit’. And you’d say that like it’s a bad thing.”

 

“We probably wouldn’t die,” Renee corrected. “They would just take us back to where we were before. And then we probably wouldn't get another chance at this, and would possibly be separated.”

 

“I don’t see what any of that has to do with not dying,” Vin said. “Although, maybe you wouldn’t die? I don’t know, you’re kinda weird sometimes and it ain’t like I can see fakey fake futures or anything.”

 

Renee narrowed her eyes. “Are you implying that a will to live is a ‘kinda weird’ thing to have?”

 

“This world sucks, Renee,” Vin said. “It sucks. Planning on spending a hundred plus years here is insane.”

 

“That’s why we strive to make the world better!” Renee said. “Life has so much to offer! There have been times and places where people made safe and caring communities; we know it can be done.”

 

“Oh yeah?” Vin said. “Name one thing that life has offered you.”

 

“Life gave me you,” Renee said quietly.

 

“Well that really blows my response out of the water,” Charlie said. “I was just going to say ‘edible sticks’.”

 

“Oh yeah,” Vin said, “edible sticks were pretty great. Even when you went and made them limp like some kinda fucking barbarian.”

 

“Vin,” Renee said, “I’m being serious.” 

 

“So am I. Why would you put the flaccid in your stomach acid when you could munch the crunch?”

 

“You flipped shit about the flaccid,” Charlie said. “You refused to be placid after inserting the flaccid in your stomach acid.”

 

“In my defense,” Vin put his hands out in front of himself, “I’m pretty sure that was the powder stuff that Renee added. It’s my hunch that if I were to munch on the crunch of a salty bunch I’d not be placid at lunch.”

 

“It was definitely well into the realm of dinner,” Renee said. “And adding a spice mix to uncooked noodles wouldn't work very well; it needs the moisture to stick.”

 

“Why must you crush my dreams?” Vin said. “Anyway, noodles are great and all, but probably not staying-here-for-a-century great.”

 

“We have the power to make this world one worth spending a lifetime in,” Renee said. “It’s true that we don’t know that we’ll win our fight, but if we don’t do anything we know things won’t get better. We have to keep fighting and not give into the temptation of apathy. They want us to lose hope, they want us to die, because then we’re letting them maintain the status quo. They’re fighting to keep us too exhausted to fight for change, and we can’t let them win.”

 

“So what, we have to keep living in this hell just to spite them?” Vin asked. “‘Cause that sounds like it involves a whole lot more fucks given about what some dudes I’ll never meet feel than I can bring myself to have.”

 

“No, we keep living to make sure that people like them never get power over us again, or at least not anytime soon,” Renee said. “Things have been better before; they will get better again. Spiting them is just a bonus.”

 

“If there’s one thing history has taught us,” Marcus said, “it’s that empires fall. This one’ll be no different. And it’s gotten so bloated and confident in its own power that it’ll fall sooner rather than later, mark my words.”

 

“But,” Vin kicked a rock across the path, “doesn’t that just mean that whatever you set up to replace it is doomed from the start? That kinda blows.”

 

“Yes, at some point things will be worse again,” Renee said. “But when that time comes, they will be able to look back at what we accomplish and be more prepared to improve their own conditions. They will know that things can be better, that people have fought incredible odds and won before, and they will have hope. And that is a legacy that I would be proud to leave behind.”   
  


“Wow, that’s way cooler than the legacy I want to leave behind,” Vin said. “I just want to make a really cool comic.”

 

“Stories are important. They’re how we pass on our history, how we dream of a better future, how we share our ideals. There is nothing lame about wanting to tell lasting stories,” Renee said. “What do you want to make your comic about?”

 

“Um. Hell if I know. I just said that I wanted to make a really cool comic, not that I had any sort of plans to make that happen.” Vin shrugged. “Anyways, are we there yet?”

 

“Vin,” Renee said, “the time we’ve been talking has in no way exceeded five minutes. We are still easily within the original estimate of about an hour and a half.”

 

“Well, I don’t wanna keep walking is all,” Vin whined. 

 

They kept walking. 

 

They kept talking. Vin kept vocally wondering if they were at Marcus’ place yet.

 

The path they were on was fairly worn; a huge improvement to trying to find the most passable way through the underbrush. Much to the relief of Renee and Alcor, their speed picked up considerably. They were climbing a steady incline, not so steep that it made walking difficult but definitely enough to be noticeable. 

 

As they came closer to the tops of the cliffs that had walled off the land, the forest to their right began to thin. Large old trees were replaced by younger saplings, like the land had been cleared out at one point. There was still a decent amount of undergrowth, and the trees definitely had some years on them, so whatever had happened occurred long enough ago that the land had time to heal. 

 

The monotony of walking and woodland was broken when Renee caught sight of something above the low treeline. 

 

“What’s that?” she asked, pointing at what she saw. It was the edge of a mesh disk of some sort. It looked huge.

 

“That’s my telescope,” Marcus said. “It’s pretty old; I mean obviously it’s old it’s on the planet. It went out of official use ages ago. They were just going to tear it up, believe it or not! I managed to get the land before they started work on it, fortunately. And now I reckon I got the best setup of any amateur astronomer.”

 

Charlie perked up. “You’re an astronomer?” ze asked.

 

“Well, a hobbyist at any rate.” Marcus shrugged. “It’s not like I got a degree in it or whatever.”

 

“Yeah, you just have your own radio telescope, that’s all. It’s not like you’re serious about it or anything.” Charlie stared at the distant disk. “Although, how well does it work? Most telescopes are out of Earth’s atmosphere to avoid atmospheric distortion, right?”

 

“There’s certainly some electromagnetic interference, but it’s not that big of a deal to filter out. Amateur astronomers have made discoveries using tiny optical telescopes in a city before; I’m far ahead of that curve.”

 

“That’s so cool!” Charlie flapped zir hands. “I’ve always dreamed of having a really nice telescope but it never even occurred to me to think about a radio telescope as a thing that you could have.”

 

“You like space?” Marcus said with a smile.

 

Charlie’s words ran together. “Yeah! It’s so vast and it contains so many cool things, every cool thing, technically. So many stellar objects are still so mysterious, even after a millennia of study. And the scale of it all! It's so incomprehensible. I really like things that I can’t fully comprehend, if that makes any sense.”

 

“Nah, I feel you there,” Marcus said.

 

“I’ve thought a lot about going on one of the colony ships,” Charlie said, “but all the ones that are leaving in the next decade are going to have such long journeys. I don’t know if I could spend the rest of my life on a spaceship. Have you thought about leaving the planet at all?”

 

“I mean, yeah, I’ve thought about it, and I might go to Mars one day just as a tourist, but I’m probably too old to go colonize the stars,” Marcus said. “They don’t really need old geezers past the age of making new people.”

 

“Yeah, that’s the other reason I’m not sure I could join one of the missions,” Charlie said more slowly. “I don’t know if I’m ever going to want to make new people.”

 

“It certainly ain’t for everyone,” Marcus said.

 

“Soooo,” Vin said, “this is it then? You live in a big dish? Shit, my guess of ‘tree’ was way off.”

 

“Nah, the building below the dish is purely a technical one,” Marcus said. “I live about a mile out still, to reduce electrical interference.”

 

“Wait.” Vin narrowed his eyes. “Does that mean what I think it means?”

 

“If you think it means that our journey's end eludes us still,” Renee said, “that although the promised destination is almost in sight it is not yet here, and that the rest you so desire sits in wait upon the other side of yet more ‘goddamn walking’, you would be absolutely correct.”

 

“This is bullshit,” Vin said. “I’m calling bullshit on reality.”

 

“A little walking never hurt no one,” said Marcus. “It’s good for you, strengthens the carapace.”

 

Walking under the dish, they were struck by the scale if it. Marcus boasted that it was 30 meters in diameter, and that was simply larger than a single object had any right to be. The technical building beneath it didn’t even make it out halfway to the edge of the disk. 

 

It didn’t take long for them to traverse the remaining mile to Marcus’ place. She lived in a lowset building that made up for its lack of height in its considerable width.

 

Marcus led them into the nearest of several visible doors. 

 

“The telescope doesn't have any sort of ability for remote operation, so the people who traveled here to use it would stay here,” Marcus said, leading them down some narrow hallways. “They would do research too, so there was quite a lot of space dedicated to computers, which has been useful in my work.”

 

“What is your work, if you don’t mind me asking?” Renee asked.

 

“I do network administration for a couple places. Nothin’ too exciting.” Marcus said. “Ah, here we are. Pardon the mess. I really ought to keep the place neater, but my crap keeps creeping further and further out.”

 

The pardon was well justified. The room looked like where old computers shuffled off to die. Old electronics and parts were strewn around the room, and thick bundles of partially exposed wires hung from the ceiling. It had nothing on the trash cave, but looked as if it had perhaps heard about the trash cave and decided that it quite admired that lifestyle. 

 

“I’ll let you crazy kids settle in on your own. You don’t need some old spider cramping your style.” And with that she turned and left, closing the door behind her. 

 

The area that Marcus had led them to had four rooms connected to a common area. There was a kitchenette on the far wall, and one of the rooms had been converted to a pantry. 

 

“I’m going to scout out food options,” Renee said. 

 

“Maybe olive us should try that. It sounds like a good idea.”

 

“No,” Renee said. “No, we will not be repeating yesterday's pre-dinner shenanigans.”

 

“Come on, it’s all ingest,” Vin said, opening his beak widely. 

 

Renee didn’t respond, instead looking around the room.

 

“Oh gods,” she said, “there’s chocolate chips in here. Honest to goodness chocolate. I think I might cry.”

 

**Pshaw. There’s no way there is actual chocolate in this woman’s pantry. Synthetic cocoa powder is not the same at all.**

 

_ the same as what? _

 

**Ground up cocoa beans, a.k.a. what chocolate was originally made of. Cocoa stopped being commercially farmable forever ago. And unlike vanilla the synthetic version isn’t chemically identical.**

 

_ chocolate was originally a bean? that sounds super gross. _

 

**I don’t even know how to respond to that.**

 

“What are you planning with those?” Charlie asked. “Cookies?”

 

“Honestly, I was just going to eat them straight from the bag,” Renee said. “I have never made cookies, and have absolutely no understanding of the process outside of the fact I’m pretty sure an oven is involved somewhere. I certainly wouldn’t be opposed to the idea, should you know how to do it.”

 

“I can follow a recipe, but it doesn't seem likely that Marcus would have randomly printed one off.” Charlie frowned. “Not being able to look things up is really inconvenient.”

 

“Then it seems we are destined to consume them raw,” Renee said sagely.

 

“That’s a little weird, isn’t it?” Charlie asked.

 

“Charlie.” Renee leaned towards zir, her stare uncomfortably intense. “I have not had anything sweet in literal years. Eating these chips could remove any remaining sliver of possibility for me returning to something vaguely resembling society and I would not give a single fuck. I am going to have some chocolate and it is going to be wonderful and nothing can stop me.”

 

**A little weird? Are you honestly telling me you’ve never eaten chocolate chips straight from the bag before?**

 

_ no? _

 

**What’s wrong with you?**

 

_ that sort of behavior wasn’t exactly encouraged back at the home. _

 

**What’s the point of having no parents if you’re just going to do every little thing you’re told?**

 

_ i have parents, rules exist for a reason, and if i really wanted some chocolate i would just ask for a candy bar, not raid the baking cabinet. _

 

**It’s better free-range.**

 

“Why. Won’t. You. Open ‽ ” Renee growled at the bag, spitting out a stray sliver of excess plastic packaging. The bag was in her hands like it had been since she picked it up, resisting her attempts at opening it, almost as if it had been carefully designed specifically to resist children attempting to tear it open in the sort of craze that can only come from spending several years confined to a small living space eating only flavorless nutrition bars, breaking out, spending a few days meandering about the woods, and then encountering the promise of sweet flavor heaven. Not only were her attempts futile, but outside of a small tear in the excess folded plastic there was no sign that anyone had even tried to open it. It was resisting her attempts in an insultingly casual manner, condescending almost, made even more insulting by the utter inability of the inanimate object to intentionally do anything, especially condescend. 

 

“Why don’t you just use scissors?” Charlie asked.

 

“Because there aren’t any in here and I thought this would be faster.”

 

“Okay, but it clearly isn’t, so -”

 

“It’s not about speed anymore, Charlie. It’s about principle now. I will not be defeated by a millimeter of plastic!”

 

Charlie watched as she continued to fail to pry the bag’s sides asunder.

 

“Yeah…” ze said. “I’m going to go get some scissors.”

 

Charlie returned fairly quickly with the kitchen shears. They had been  fairly easy to find, hanging off of a large bar magnet on the wall with the knives. The setup made Charlie more than a little nervous; ze was a bit wary of knives in general, and to have them hanging off the ground was just an accident waiting to happen in zir mind. 

 

Charlie wordlessly offered the scissors to Renee handle first. 

 

Renee glared at them for a minute before taking them.

 

“Fine,” she said. “But I’ll have you know my method would have worked too.”

 

“Right.”

 

“Eventually.”

 

“Right.”

 

“I’m only doing it this way because it’s faster,” she said, “and I really  _ really _ want this chocolate as soon as nagaly possible.”

 

“Hey, so what’s the deal with chocolate, anyway?” Vin asked. “It gets a lot of noise for something that looks like a tiny shit.”

 

“Vin.” Renee lowered the bag. “Do you ever actually think about what you say at all or do you just open your mouth and let what happens happen?”

 

“It’s basically just verbal barfing,” Vin admitted. “Thinking sucks. That’s part of why I talk so much. If I noise barf hard enough, I can’t hear the brain barf and the world is a better place. Anyway. The tiny sugar shits, what’s their deal?”

 

Charlie shrugged. “Taste good.”

 

Renee snipped the corner of the bag off with a quick hand movement. “One cannot explain the deal of the ‘tiny sugar shits’. One can only experience it for oneself.”   
  


She poured a small handful into her hand and popped them into her mouth. 

 

And froze.

 

The sweetness hit her like an very large and enthusiastic puppy. It was wonderful, but so very much. It filled her senses; the melted residue on her finger tips, the smooth mound plastered against her teeth, the rich smell of it, and the taste. Oh the taste. It filled her, becoming her whole world. In that moment nothing else mattered.

 

She hadn’t remembered chocolate being so overpowering before. 

 

She couldn’t actually remember the last time she had chocolate. She probably hadn’t appreciated it enough. She hadn’t properly appreciated most parts of not being locked in a small living space with a single other person and having all access to the rest of the world strictly controlled. 

 

“Um, Renee?” Charlie’s voice cut through her thoughts. “Are you okay?”

 

Her eyes were watering. 

 

She really missed sugar. 

 

She really missed doing nice things for herself. Being able to do nice things for herself.

 

She swallowed, took a breath, and nodded to Charlie. 

 

“I’m sorry, I just… I’m really glad to be out of that awful place.”

 

“Glad to hear that you’re not like choking and dying or whatever,” Vin said. “It would be really awkward to eat over your freshly corpsed body.”

 

“You would try eating something after watching me perish directly after consuming it?”

 

“You’re adding the possibility of death to something that has already gotten as much hype as chocolate?” Vin asked. “I’m sorry Renee, I do love you but there isn’t enough grief in my body to keep me away from that shit.”

 

“Since death’s off the table how about you just have some chocolate?”

 

“How could you even say that? Death is absolutely still on the table. Death is sprawled along the length of the table with a single leg seductively sticking out from their robe. Death’s posing for a portrait, that’s how on the table they still are.” Vin shook his head. “Anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to eat the shit outta those weird little mounds, but I’m just not sure how good they can be now that I’ve tried edible sticks and their delicious soggy cousins. I don’t see how anything can beat edible limp sticks, and I’m just worried that I’ve created an unsurpassable standard for what food should be like on the outside.”

 

“How about you actually try more than one new food before having an existential crisis?” Renee said, tossing the bag to Vin.

 

“I don’t need more than one food to know when I’ve hit peak,” Vin said, reaching into the bag to grab a couple chips. “I don’t need more than one food to know when my actual soul aligns with the very fabric of the Universe in a single instant of perfect -”

 

“Vin, stop talking before you put those in your mouth.”

 

“Me? Stop talking? Renee do you ever think before you open your mouth?” Vin popped his handful of chocolate into his mouth. 

 

“Renee,” he said, spraying bits of chocolate everywhere. “Holy SHIT Renee. This is… I can’t… Edible sticks have nothing on this, it like… It’s like food but, it’s good? Like, it makes my mouth happy? This is good shit, Renee. The best shit. Like, I was constipated for days and now I’m free good shit. My cloaca is a tingling void good shit. My colon is clear and my crops are fertilized is what I’m saying here, this is the best fucking shit to ever be shat.”

 

“Please never open your mouth again,” Renee said. “Just, stop talking forever.”

 

“Can I do nothing but eat these things forever?” Vin said. “I think I want to do nothing but eat these things forever.”

 

Renee shook her head sadly. “I fear that there may be a few obstacles between you and your ascension to the position of infinite and eternal consumer of chocolate.” 

 

“Oh please, like anything could stand in my way.” Vin puffed out his chest. “Name one thing that could possibly get between me and this visceral need to stuff my gob with these tiny god morsels till the end of time.”

 

“Me,” she said, snatching the bag away from Vin.

 

“What? Okay this is bullshit, you’ve definitely had way more of this shit throughout your life than I have. You gotta let me have at least that bag to catch up; it’s only fair.”

 

“Fair this may not be, but I happen to be on the order of ten times your size, so…” She shrugged. “What are you planning on doing about it?”

 

“Oh, so height makes right now?” Vin asked. “Doesn’t that go against everything you stand for?”

 

Renee grinned. “I can’t stand for anything; I don’t have legs. And you must understand: there is no fair consumption of chocolate under late capitalism. Whether or not I am to unfairly take the chips that you otherwise may have eaten doesn't change the fact that this chocolate was manufactured using stolen labor. Is it fair that a person can be forced to work a third of their life away to produce this chocolate? Is it fair that that same person may die because they aren’t compensated enough to afford necessary medical treatments? Is it fair that some necessary labor is devalued to the point that those who perform it might struggle to even get chocolate whereas others could obtain ludicrous amounts every second for doing practically nothing?”

 

“No, but none of those situations relate to me personally so I don’t care,” Vin said. “Now are you going to eat any of that or are you just going to wave it around, taunting me with visions of all the glorious mouth heaven I could be experiencing right now if only I had mad hops?”

 

“How do you know that you don’t have the jumping prowess necessary to retrieve the artifact of deliciousness?” she said. “You haven’t even attempted reacquisition.”

 

“My legs are really sore and you’re sitting like, two feet higher than me.” Vin shook his head. “That bag might as well be on another planet for all I could conceivably retrieve it.”

 

Renee ate a handful of chocolate. “Charlie? Would you like to partake in this indulgence as well?”

 

“Please,” ze said.

 

Charlie ate some chocolate. It sure was chocolate alright.

 

“Hey! How come ze’s not freaking out or crying or anything?”

 

Charlie shrugged. “It’s just chocolate.”

 

“It’s just chocolate?” Vin exclaimed. “Just chocolate? I’m over here having a religious experience and you’re all ‘oh whatever it’s  _ just  _ the greatest thing ever created that’s all.’ How can you possibly say that it’s just chocolate that’s absurd it’s the best fucking thing I’ve ever eaten.”

 

“Haven’t you only eaten like, three things total?” Charlie asked.

 

Vin crossed his arms. “I don’t see what that’s gotta do with shit.” 

 

“It’s better when it’s mixed with other stuff,” Charlie said.

 

Vin scoffed. “How the actual fuck could diluting something as great as chocolate with things not as great as chocolate ever make something anything other than a disappointment?”

 

“Candy bars are going to blow your mind,” Charlie said. 

 

“Like fuck they will. My mind is stable and chill as ice.”

 

“So, what you are saying is that you melt down at room temperature? I certainly cannot argue with that,” Renee said.

 

**As fantastic as chocolate is, we should probably think about what actual food you’ll be eating.**

 

_ i could whip up some pasta again. i’m pretty good at pasta. _

 

**You fainted earlier. We should do something with higher protein than that.**

 

_ i don’t really know how to cook anything that’s high protein, and i’m pretty sure i’m the best cook here. _

 

**Good thing I’m here then, isn’t it? Go look around the pantry and I’ll see what I can do.**

 

**And get some more chocolate before those two eat it all.**

 

Charlie retrieved a handful of chocolate and nibbled on it as ze looked through the pantry. Between the walls and shelves were interlocking rectangular jugs of water. There were a lot of canned goods. So many cans that there was no way of identifying what was in most of them. Walls of canned goods. Too many canned goods. 

 

Charlie had never wanted anything from a can less.

 

Fortunately there were also non-canned items, albeit fewer of them. Baking supplies, dried fruit and nuts, pasta; it was pretty well stocked. There was a whole shelf of various oils for some reason. There was also a deep freeze that was mostly full of game meat, but did have some other things in it as well.

 

**Okay, how do you feel about something fried? Because I haven’t had fried protein in probably a century and have one heck of a craving.**

 

_ fried what? _

 

**I was thinking tofu, because I get the feeling that you’re going to be needlessly picky about eating any of this meat.**

 

_ Eating murdered animals is gross. I’m not being ‘needlessly picky’. _

 

**The animal’s already dead; eating its remains isn’t going to make it any deader. It’s literally the exact same thing as vat meat now. Actually, it’s a little better than vat meat because there’s pockets of fat and variation in texture.**

 

_ It’s completely different from vat meat! Vat meat wasn’t a living thing with feelings that was murdered unnecessarily. It also didn’t have a life spent in the outdoors surrounded by pathogens. Do you know how many historical illnesses happened because of how meat was raised?  _

 

**Generally, illnesses happen when meat isn’t handled and cooked properly. You’re not going to get sick eating well-fried deer. And you know that all vat meat originated from a living animal with feelings that was murdered for its precious, precious cells, right?**

 

_ yeah but that was like, centuries ago. they didn’t have any other options back then.  _

 

**And how come crickets and cricket byproducts are okay to eat? Insects have feelings.**

 

_ crickets don’t need much to be happy.  _

 

**So it’s about living conditions of the animals then? So what’s the problem with hunted meat?**

 

_ can we not cross examine my eating habits right now? i haven’t really thought most of this through enough to have words for it. _

 

**I’m just trying to understand. If we’re going to be spending any length of time together it’s useful for me to know what you’re willing to eat.**

 

_ you could just ask, you don’t need to get into the psychology of why. _

 

_ although it’s occuring to me i never bothered asking you. is there anything i should avoid eating while you’re… while we’re together? _

 

**Nah. I’ll eat anything.**

 

_ there’s not anything you try to avoid? _

 

**I mean what I said pretty literally. I’ll eat food, small rocks, electronics that annoy me, not so small rocks, generally whatever.**

 

**That said bananas make me feel gross for some reason.**

 

_ well I can avoid bananas for a little. _

 

**Don’t bother. Sometimes it’s nice to feel gross.**

 

_ … _

_ so fried tofu. what’s that like? I’ve never had it before. _

 

**Tofu doesn’t have a very strong flavor, so it mostly just tastes like fried. Slightly chewy fried, since we’re using frozen stuff. Think you could recite some instructions to the others? It’s easiest with more hands.**

 

_ actually i was thinking… maybe, since you’re the one that knows what you’re doing, you could _

 

_ you know,  _

 

_ tell them yourself? _

 

**You want me to take over for this? Are you sure?**

  
  


_ but i think it might be good to have a not terrible experience where you’re in control. it might make it not so bad if you need to take over again in the future. _

 

_ also i really don’t like telling people what to do, even if they want me to. _

 

**Not a bad idea. It will be way easier to teach people if I don’t have to worry about going through you. You want me to start now, or wait a bit?**

 

_ let’s just get it over with. _

 

Alcor stretched Charlie’s arms and grabbed a few packages of tofu. 

 

**Is this okay?**

 

_ um… yes. this is fine. i’m fine. totally fine. _

 

**Great!**

 

“For food that isn’t chocolate, how does fried tofu sound to you two?” Alcor asked.

 

“I was off board the moment you said ‘food that isn’t chocolate’,” Vin said. “I’m a simple bird with simple needs, and to eat nothing but chocolate for the rest of my life is all of them.”

 

“That might lead to a life lacking in the longevity department,” Renee said.

 

“See? It’s like, the perfect life decision. There are literally no downsides.”

 

Renee sighed and shook her head. “Why are you asking us instead of Charlie?” And with a note of alarm she continued, “Ze didn’t faint again, did ze?”

 

“What? No, no, ze’s  _ fine _ . Charlie’s actually the one that suggested I take over. It will make it easier for me to walk you through the cooking process. And ze’s a-okay right now; I asked and everything.” Alcor touched Charlie’s pointer finger to zir thumb and put the rest of zir fingers up in an archaic gesture. “Oh yeah, that reminds me. The cooking would be easier with more people; are you willing to help out?”

 

“I’m not sure it would be a good idea to let me fry anything,” Renee said. “Oil is concerningly flammable for my skill level.”

 

Vin grinned. “I’m totally down to set myself on fire; sign me the fuck up.” 

 

“Neither one of you will be anywhere near the frying pan,” Alcor said. “I just need you to help bread the slices.”

 

Charlie was, all things considered, a tad less than a-okay. Just a smidgen under the weather. The weather was barely above zir, like ze was flying a small plane through a thunderstorm. But ze  _ wasn’t panicking _ . That was the important thing. Ze could tell that ze wasn’t panicking because of how much ze was thinking about not panicking. This was okay. Really. Ze just needed to breathe. Except ze couldn’t breathe. Because possession. 

 

On the other hand, possession meant zir heart rate and breathing were totally normal, which meant that ze couldn’t be panicked at all, not even a little, right? Charlie mentally laughed. That was definitely how things worked. Everybody go home, this fear was conquered. Conquered like a fox. 

 

**Charlie, are you paying attention?**

 

_ i’m fine. _

 

**So no then. I didn’t think you felt very present. You should watch this; I’ve thawed the tofu and am about to drain it. It’s a pretty important step if you ever want to prepare something like this on your own.**

 

_ oh, um, okay then. go ahead. i’m watching. _

 

Charlie watched as zir hands piled paper towels on a cutting board and placed a slab of tofu in the center of them, piling more on top and pressing down on the pile with a plate. The words coming out of zir mouth drifted around the room meaninglessly, but the task seemed simple enough that Charlie wasn’t concerned about zir inability to focus on words. Ze focused on zir hands, the pressure of leaning on the plate to press the water out, the peculiar smooth yet slimy feeling of the tofu, the unusual exertion of zir arm muscles from how enthusiastically Alcor did everything. It was calming, sort of. Like experiencing a cooking simulation, if simulations could force your body to move against your will. Calming like some kind of cooking / horror cross-genre simulation. It was, at the very least, more calming than focusing on zir inability to move had been. And ze knew that ze could end it with a word, which became a comforting mantra.

 

Alcor explained how to to bread the tofu to the two teens. Renee took flour and breadcrumb duties to keep her hands dry while Vin was slightly concerningly enthusiastic about getting his gooey with rehydrated eggs. Alcor handled the actual frying, explaining as he went how to handle hot oil without getting splashed and how to identify when cooking was finished.

 

_ could i try taking over frying those last couple? it seems simple enough. _

 

**Sure.**

 

Charlie’s heart rate shot up the moment Alcor took a backseat, and zir breathing became rushed and shallow. Ze stretched, partially just to reassure zirself that ze could, and shook out some tension. 

 

Ze was in control.

 

Ze was fine. 

 

Nothing bad had happened. 

 

“Charlie?” Renee asked, “Is that you?”

 

“Yeah,” ze said. “I wanted to try to fry something myself. And I was getting a bit claustrophobic stuck in there.”

 

“So should we be expecting more body sharing in the future?”

 

“I don’t know,” Charlie said, carefully lowering a piece of tofu to the oil. “I don’t really like doing it but it doesn’t seem right to keep hogging the front seat. It’s really freaky not being able to control the body you’re in.”

 

**I appreciate the thought, but I really don’t mind that much.**

 

_ Are you sure? _

 

**Yes. Don’t get me wrong, it’s incredibly boring, but it’s not like being in control would make wandering around the woods much less boring.**

 

**I’m pretty used to not having physical agency. Constantly experiencing physical sensation all the time is actually a step up from normal.**

 

_ That sounds like an awful way to have to exist. _

 

**Can’t say I’d recommend it, but you get used to it eventually.**

 

_ Well, let me know if you start to get too stir crazy. We’ll work something out. _

 

**I will, but I don’t imagine it will come up. I’m in control all night after all.**

 

“Or maybe he doesn’t mind? I guess I’ll probably be fronting while awake.”

 

“I’m glad that he’s fine taking back seat, since doing so seems to cause you some distress. I’m sorry if this cooking session has been hard for you.”

 

“It’s fine. It was the most practical way of doing things.”

 

“Just ‘cause something’s practical don’t mean it doesn’t suck.” Vin said. “Like, those food bars that they gave us. Practical, sure, but they had to be the suckiest food option imaginable.”

 

**Speaking of food options: those are looking like some pretty well fried pieces of tofu.**

 

_ oh geeze i wasn’t paying attention at all. _

 

Charlie carefully fished the last of the tofu from the oil, putting them with the others on some paper towels. 

 

“Alright, let’s ingest the shit outta these weird rectangles,” Vin said. “They look pretty food bar-y, but chocolate looked like pretty tiny shits and turned out to be a-fucking-mazing so I’m down to give them a try.”

 

“Are we sure it’s a good idea to introduce fried food to Vin so soon?” Renee asked. “I’m worried such quantities of expanded horizons might result in an malignant case of mind blowage, which could easily result in unrelenting obnoxiousness. I fear the potential for a repeat of the ‘good shit’ speech is high.”

 

“Oh, like I need an excuse to be unrelentingly obnoxious,” Vin said. “Nice try,  _ Renee _ , if that even is your real name, but I’m going to eat those crunch munchers and I’m going to be obnoxious as hell, and these two facts will be correlated but not causated.”

 

Charlie grabbed a piece of tofu while the other two bickered. It was good; crunchy and chewy and mostly tasting of oil. 

 

“Guys,” Vin said, having finally stopped bullshiting with Renee enough to try some tofu. “This is really fucking good. Like,  _ really _ good. But like, it’s good different ways than chocolate? What is this bullshit??”

 

“That would be what’s known as ‘flavors’,” Charlie said, loading up a plate with dark brown rice. “There’s like, six different ways that things can taste good, or at least that’s what Big Taste would have you believe.”

 

Vin’s eyes were wide. “I must try all of them.”

 

“I’m sure we can make progress on that quest in the upcoming days,” Renee said. “I’ll have to make an effort to find something sour.”

 

They filled their bellies with the food they made and the space with their conversation. They devoured all the tofu, leaving some of the rice uneaten. 

 

After they finished eating, Charlie went to take a nap. Exhaustion had been seeping through zir like water into a sponge since ze fainted. Ze collapsed onto the bed as a sack of potatoes would out of the tiny useless hands of an overambitious baby. Zir limbs felt like they had weights tied to them. Zir whole body felt like a weight just slightly outside of Charlie's ability to lift. It didn’t take long at all for sleep to overcome zir. 

 

Alcor sat up and looked around the room. 

 

Swinging Charlie’s legs off the bed, he got up and purposely walked to a corner of the room. There was a tablet, probably the better part of a century old, lying screen down on the floor, thick wires connecting it to the wall. Alcor flipped it over and experimentally prodded the screen. It flickered to life after a few long seconds, displaying a temperature graph.

 

Alcor flicked the thermostat app aside. 

 

“There’s nothing interesting on that that works offline,” Vin said. “I already checked.”

 

“Oh, I highly doubt you checked for what I’m looking for,” Alcor said. 

 

“And just what is it that you’re looking for?” Renee enquired.

 

“Gonna call a friend,” Alcor said.

 

Renee whipped around to face him. “A friend ‽ Are you out of your mind? You can’t connect to the internet, they’ll find us!”

 

“I didn’t say anything about the internet,” Alcor said calmly. “I doubt I could even use it on this thing; I think Marcus manually disabled its ability to connect.”

 

“Unless you’re especially close with Minesweeper, I fail to see how this could possibly work.”

 

“Well, it’s not my fault you don’t know enough,” Alcor said with a shrug. “There are more ways to connect to someone with a computer than by going through the internet. I was pretty skilled at computers once; this should be no problem.”

 

“And more methods of communication are being monitored than just the internet!” Renee hissed. “You’re going to get Marcus into serious shit!”

 

“I know you don’t trust me, but could you at least trust that I can think of obvious pitfalls? I’m not just going to send an unsecured message friendward and hope they get it. This friend of mine, they’re  _ really _ good with computers. And they spread a program, that includes a direct and secure line of communication with them, across all sorts of machines. It’s a virus, really, and it spread very very well, so there’s a decent chance that it might be on this tablet.”

 

“Your friend made a virus for the sole purpose of opening lines of communication?”

 

“No, that’s not the point of the virus,” Alcor said, “that’s just a happy coincidence. And technically he didn’t make it, I did. He just improved it a lot.”

 

“Why did you make a virus?” Renee asked.

 

“People were writing things about me that I didn’t like, and I wanted to make them stop. After a while I got really into the project and it kinda ballooned out of control.”

 

“You? Get obsessed with something only to have it go horribly wrong? No way.”

 

“I wouldn’t say it went horribly wrong,” Alcor said, with a small smile. “Quite the opposite, really. It went wonderfully right.”

 

Alcor smile widened as a small, pixelated figure appeared on the screen. 

 

“In fact, I’d reckon that a whole lotta things are going to start going wonderfully right.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright! Chapter 3 is done, we're over half way done with the fic.
> 
> I've already written the major conflict of the next chapter. It currently looks like it will be a relatively short chapter, and hopefully it wont take me that long to finish writing it. I'm planning on focusing primarily on Haunted and Hunted over my other fic from now on, so ideally updates will come faster.
> 
> Thanks to TheItalianScribe for being my poetry consultant for this chapter.


	4. Chapter 4

****“And you’re sure this won't kill me somehow?” Charlie asked.

 

“Yes. Absolutely. If anything goes wrong we’ll stop at once, and even if we don’t, anything going unusually will activate this spell, instantly ending the ritual.” Renee was pointing at a ring of runes inside the arcane circle.

 

The circle was, outside of the killswitch addition, a very simple one. A pentacle drawn in chalk on the hard cement floor with the five symbols of banishment at each of the star’s corners. It was the simplest reliable banishment spell possible, pretty much only able to work on consenting entities or those who lacked any sort of intent of their own.

 

**I worked pretty hard on that cancel button and I’m like, 80% sure it’ll be fine.**

 

_You’re telling me this has a 20% chance of killing me_ _‽_

 

**I mean, maybe?**

 

**I’m pretty much pulling numbers out of my ass here, to be quite honest.**

 

_everything you say is so reassuring._

 

**Hey, I’m the one that advocated against this from the start.**

 

_You wanted us to do nothing!_

 

**I wanted us to wait for more data. My friend will get us the original summoning circle, and reverse engineering it will be way easier and safer than just guessing at what might work.**

 

_But how long will that take? And how will your ‘friend’ even contact us, assuming they get the plans? We’re gonna be in the middle of the woods away from all electronics for a while._

 

**That’s hardly a concern. He’ll find a way; he’s quite crafty.**

 

**Anyway.**

 

**You’re the one at risk so it’s your decision. You don’t trust my friend? Fine. Try banishing me. Just know that there is danger involved.**

 

“Charlie?” Renee said, “are you ready for us to begin?”

 

“Um,” Charlie said. “Sure. Let’s… Let’s get this over with.”

 

“Make sure to let us know if anything feels off.”

 

“How am I supposed to know if something feels of if I don’t know what getting exorcised is suppose to feel like?”

 

“Um…” Renee said, “we’ll go slowly. Try and imagine what a normal exorcism might feel like and let us know if this feels different.”

 

“I’m having second thoughts. Actually, I think I’m probably on fifth or sixth thoughts by now.”

 

“It’s okay to back out. We don’t have to do this.”

 

“I’ll be the first to admit I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Vin said. “On the other hand, how much worse can shit actually get?”

 

“That’s actually a good point,” Charlie said. “I already could easily die via possession, or get captured by creepy scientists, or like, trip on a rock and die. Why not add ‘death from good intentions’ to the list? Yeah, let’s do this!”

 

Charlie walked into the center of the circle and sat down. Renee started chanting a simple chant in modern English. Older dialects and languages tended to be more powerful, but they were easier to fuck up and there was little need for making the ritual as powerful as possible.

 

“Um,” Charlie said after a minute, “is it supposed to hurt? Like a lot? Like my skin’s on fire?”

 

Renee stopped chanting at once. “No, it’s not supposed to hurt at all! Are you okay?”

 

“Define ‘okay’,” Charlie said. “If your definition includes ‘feels like I just got a really bad sunburn but it’s kinda fading’ then yeah, I’m okay. Or at least as okay as I was before, which was already pushing the definition of ‘okay’.”

 

“I’m sorry. It would seem that they did tie your skin into the ritual they used.” Renee sighed. “I have no idea where to go from here.”

 

“Well, maybe mysterious computer friend will come through,” Charlie said. “If not, well, guess I’ll die.”

 

“Charlie.” Renee met Charlie’s gaze. “You’re not going to die. There are still other things we can try.”

 

“Really?” Charlie broke away from Renee’s eye contact, shifting zir gaze to the floor. “Like what?”

 

“Ah...” Renee’s face passed through several expressions before settling on ‘student woken up when called upon to demonstrate a problem for the class’. “Well, we still have time to think of things we can try.”

 

“Or maybe the situation is just boned and there is nothing we can do,” Vin said. “Like I hate to be that guy but sometimes shit’s just irrevocably fucked.”

 

“Vin!”

 

“What? We were all thinkin’ it. Someone had to unpack that shit from the back of their mind and put it on the table to be beheld in all its awful smelly glory.” Vin shrugged. “I still got a bad feeling; I don’t think we’re going to find something that will work.”

 

“You still have a bad feeling even after we stopped the ritual?” Renee asked. “Are you sure it’s about Charlie at all?”

 

He shrugged. “What part of ‘I don’t know a thing, my guy’ do you have trouble understanding?”

 

“That’s not good.” Renee slithered around the chalk circle on the ground. “Maybe we should start moving.”

 

“Yeah,” Vin said. “Maybe.”

 

Cleaning the circle off the rough cement floor was easy, which was good because they were in a hurry and it was generally considered rude to leave ritual materials strewn about someone else’s place.

 

Getting their things together was also pretty quick as they hadn’t had any reason to unpack much the night before. It took only a few minutes to add the few items that Marcus had given them to their things.

 

Their footsteps echoed faintly through the otherwise silent early morning hallways as they went back through the same path that Marcus had led them through the day before. Walking through the dim corridors they saw no sign of their host, but they figured that she wouldn’t mind them disappearing without saying goodbye.

 

The crisp outdoor air chilled their lungs as they left the building. They headed East - Marcus had said that it was the shortest way out of the forest and Renee wanted to scout out the area outside. She wasn’t sure she wanted to leave the woods yet - they didn’t have anywhere to go and the woods were large and secluded enough to be a decent place to hide - but she at least wanted a solid idea of what was beyond.

 

Cliffs rose to either side of them as they walked. It made Renee nervous, but suggesting alternate paths didn’t alleviate the dark feeling that hung over Vin like a bad toupée, and this path seemed to be the easiest way East. The relative flatness and rocky nature of the ground suggested that they were in a dried out riverbed, and none of them were going to complain about having slightly less underbrush to navigate through.

 

Renee was being careful. Vin’s intuition was telling them something was wrong and she was not going to let whatever fate had in store catch them unawares. She was almost entirely focused on her farsight, trusting in her companions to keep an eye on the immediate surroundings.

 

Her first thought had been that something was happening at the facility, but when she checked she found the place utterly immersed in chaos. People were rushing out of the place, alarm lights were flashing, a small fire (normal and red/orange in appearance for once) was raging in one of the computer rooms. It seemed unlikely that they were going to be able try anything. She supposed it could be an elaborate ruse but it seemed unlikely that they would actually set their building on fire just in case she happened to check on them.

 

So whatever was going to happen was already in the works. And was quite possibly unavoidable, judging from Vin’s current state.

 

She supposed it was possible that whatever was going to happen had nothing to do with the facility at all, and that they were about to die to a supervolcano explosion or a meteor strike or something. There wasn’t really anything that they would be able to do about a natural disaster, and it would explain why no suggestions altered Vin’s intuition.

 

She decided to stop thinking about that. There was no point wasting her time worrying about things she couldn’t do anything about.

 

It was possible the small fire at the facility could rage out of control and burn the whole forest down. It was kinda dry. How dry did it even need to be to burn green wood anyway? She really should have studied more wilderness survival. Now they were all going to burn to death and she wouldn’t even know how impressed to be that the fire managed to spread.

 

She decided to Stop Thinking About That. She _wasn’t_ wasting her time worrying about things she couldn’t do anything about.

 

She managed to go about a minute before checking back on the fire at the facility. It seemed to be smaller than it had been when she first noticed it. There were sprinklers on. They were probably going to wreck all the computer hardware in that room.

 

She took a few breaths and shifted her focus away from the facility. The fire wasn’t going be a problem. There was no point watching the facility anymore. Whatever threat menaced them now was already on its way.

 

The other day the doctor - Dana, their name had been Dana - had been adamant on getting someone involved who was qualified to deal with Tyrone. That was probably what was happening. Not a massive fire, not a supervolcano, just someone who had some way of tracking them and good enough mobility that they couldn’t be evaded with good intuition alone. Someone who would have a computer on them and wouldn’t be fooled by simple illusions.

 

Renee still had no idea how, exactly, she was supposed to deal with this, but combed through the woods with her farsight anyway, figuring that if she could at least see the threat she might be able to better assess the situation.

 

The group continued in silence for a ways. No one really felt like talking.

 

The silence that hung over them wasn’t a comfortable one. The sense of dread that weighed down Vin had spread to everyone, and they were all just waiting to hear the grenade’s pin drop.

 

And drop it most certainly did.

 

There was nothing unusual about the patch of thin forest they were traversing through until the trees wavered and disappeared, revealing a clearing with a single short person grinning ahead of them.

 

The group stopped suddenly, with Renee putting herself in front of the other two.

 

Looking around, she noticed people with guns pointed towards them on the cliffs to either side.

 

“You didn’t think you were the only one that could make illusions, did you?” the person said. Their skin was dark and their white hair reached just past the small of their back. They were dressed very formally, in well-fitting clothing that was far too clean for someone trekking through the forest to be wearing.

 

“Oh, you really shouldn’t look so shocked, dear.” Their voice was high pitched and sounded sort of like someone attempting to talk with a German accent after having one described secondhand to them, which happened to be exactly what a modern Australian accent sounded like.

 

“You didn’t actually think that a few simple illusions and a bit of luck could keep you from me, did you? Now, that’s just _darling?_ ” they said, clapping their hands together. “Anyways, let’s get on with things, shall we?”

 

A magicore floated to their hands from behind them. It was a smooth orb, covered with yellow lines of light that danced around at the magi’s touch. The magi made a few sweeping gestures, strumming the magicore as their hands moved around it, and then flicked both their wrists, causing a bright yellow light to shoot away from them at Charlie.

 

Charlie barely had time to register the light before it hit zir, lifting zir off the ground and illuminating zir body in a blinding flash. This only lasted a moment before ze fell out of the air and consciousness.

 

Alcor managed to land in a manner that didn’t even vaguely resemble elegant, but at least didn’t hurt the body at all.

 

“So you cannot be sedated, such a shame,” they said. “I take it that now I’m dealing you and not some little child?”

 

“I’m amazed you still have the resources left to bother with us.”

 

“Oh, they paid me in advance darling; I couldn’t care less about what happens to them.”

 

“You might want to double check that that transfer actually went through.”

 

“Who _cares_. What matters is that this is you! Oh, how exciting this all is. I’ve been waiting for years for this moment, you know. Admittedly, this is not quite how I saw this encounter going, but you can’t let a few details get you down, am I right?”

 

Alcor stared at the magi.

 

“Let’s do introductions, shall we? Not that you need any introductions, your reputation precedes you, but I’m afraid mine does not. At least, not in your current state. Normally I imagine you have no need for introductions at all. Must make social encounters very convenient. Anyway, I’m Magi Briana Hurtzog, she/her, at your service. Well, not at _your_ service per say, but you know what I mean.”

 

“Am I supposed to be pleased to meet you or something?” Alcor all but snarled. “Because I really cannot fully encapsulate how much that is not the case.”

 

“How could you say such a thing? This scar goes deep into my heart.” She dramatically covered her heart with a hand. “Anyways you should come with me and we can go get you out of that ridiculous body.”

 

“And then what?” Alcor crossed Charlie’s arms.

 

“I’m not going to lie,” she said. “What happens next is not exactly in your favor. But it will be a great learning opportunity for everybody involved and I think we can all agree that that is what really matters.”

 

“And what about the kids?” Alcor asked. “What happens to them?”

 

“What? Them? I don’t care about _them_. They can go back to prancing through the woods or whatever it is that they were doing. I’m not their babysitter.” She waved her hand absently. “That said, if you don’t come along nicely, well, I don’t care about them. Or specifically what will happen to them. What all of these armed guards will do to them. I’m going to have them killed is what I’m saying here.”

 

“No, I got that.”

 

“Oh good. One can never be sure.”

 

“I’m many things, but a moron isn’t one of them,” he said dryly.

 

“Some people have trouble with the subtext, darling.” She spread her fingers wide. “There is no shame in that.”

 

“Do you people have any tricks up your sleeve besides threatening children?”

 

“Oh!” Her face lit up. “I could also threaten you directly if you’d prefer.”

 

Briana’s hands spun around her magicore, tiny bolts of electricity reaching between it and her fingers.

 

She snapped, pointing at Alcor.

 

It was like being slammed into a wall. Pain - and not the interesting kind - blossomed through his very being. The world spun. He stumbled backwards, or maybe just thought he did because the body didn’t seem to actually change position.

 

“Not very pleasant, I hope? Just a little something I’ve been working on in my spare time. That was roughly one percent of what it’s capable of. If my calculations are correct I imagine that at full power it would be capable of rendering you incapacitated for a number of hours.”

 

“Why the hell didn’t you start with that?” he growled.

 

“Language, darling. There are children about. As for your question, I was hoping we could keep this civil and not have to resort to threats of torture.”

 

“So instead you open with threats of child murder.”

 

“Exactly, darling. Now I think we’ve wasted enough time with all of this chitter chatter. Shall we be going, or are you going to make things unnecessarily difficult?”

 

* * *

 

Renee looked around. She was not going to panic this time. There was a way out, she knew that. She just had to find it. She was smart. Clever. She could do this. Would do this.

 

_Breathe in_

 

_1_

 

_2_

 

_3_

 

_4_

 

_Breathe out_

 

Alcor was still talking, having taken a few steps towards the magi. It was hard to say if he had a plan or was just testing the waters. She had to assume that he didn’t have a plan. Worst case scenario, there would be redundancy. Who was she kidding, worst case scenario they were all going to BE FINE. This was Fine. She just needed a plan.

 

_1_

 

_2_

 

_3_

 

_4_

 

_Breathe in_

 

She was fine.

 

Vin was casually looking at the gunpeople periodically spaced around the cliff’s edge.

 

_1_

 

_2_

 

_3_

 

_4_

 

_Breathe out._

 

_Good. Now go talk to Vin._

 

“How are you so calm about all this?” Renee whispered, more harshly than she intended. It wasn’t what she intended to say, but upon reflection she couldn’t figure out what she meant to say outside of ‘something else’.

 

“What?” he replied. “It’s not like we were going to remain valuable assets forever. This was pretty inevitable.”

 

“Not it isn’t! We’ve gotten so far. Their building is on fire, for Pete’s sake. We just need to find a way out, it’s going to be okay. We are going to be okay.”

  


_Breathe._

  


“Hey Renee?” Vin said.

 

“What?”

 

“I just wanted to say, thanks for everything. These last few days,” he laughed, “okay, these last few days have been a fucking shitshow, but it’s a shitshow that I’m really glad I got the opportunity to experience. I never would have gotten out of there on my own. If it wasn’t for you...  I didn’t really have any memories from before, you know, so just having this time out here, having gotten to see and do all this shit before I die… It means a lot to me.”

 

“Vin, stop talking like that, we’re going to be fine -”

 

“This is fine,” he shrugged. “Well, it’s kinda bullshit that they are going to kill you too. I’m sorry I can’t help you there; someone as great as you really does deserve better.”

 

“Vin please, no one is going to die. We just need a plan.”

 

“Aren’t you supposed to be the realistic one? We’ve seen way too much. The only reason we aren’t dead yet is they want to make sure that Tyrone’s pacified first so he doesn’t get mad enough to explode Charlie and burninate everyone.”

 

“But hey!” He beamed. “Look on the bright side. This is by far the coolest thing to ever happen to us, and I don’t know about you but I’ve been _dying_ to participate in something this dramatic.”

 

“How can you -” She shook her head. “No. We are going to get out of this alive. We just… can’t you feel anything about the future? There has to be something.”

 

“Nah. I ain’t got shit right now.”

 

“Please! You have to have something. Anything! It just... even some little random impulse.”

 

“Hey, you know that I can’t control this shit.” He laughed completely mirthlessly. “And I really don’t think you want me to follow my impulses right now. Not really any need to rush it at this point, anyway.”

 

“Vin come on, there’s something. There has to be something. What about what they were having you do back at the lab? You had some amount of control over that, didn’t you?”

 

“Renee! I can’t just…”

 

“You haven’t even tried! You’ve said yourself that you don’t know how this works, the extents of your capabilities!”

 

“Fine.” He rolled his eyes and then closed them. “Look, I’m making my best constipated face while wishing really hard on -”

 

His eyes went wide, pupils constricted to nothing.

 

“Oh fuck.”

 

The scar along his forehead shot open, his third eye dilated to blackness.

 

Vin crumpled.

 

Collapsed.

 

Renee froze. Balled her hands, nails drawing blood. Reached out, grabbing, pulling him to her chest.

 

“I’m so sorry. Fuck I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed you. I shouldn’t have… I’m sorry. Please say something. Please be okay. You have to be okay.”

 

She was shaking. Holding him. Tighter, probably, than was wise. Lower torso curling in on itself, pushing and flipping. Slamming against the ground. Her eyes raced around, looking for answers, a way out, something, _anything_. For.

 

The gunpeople were alarmed by something, shuffling around, taking aim. Had she made too large of a scene? She wrapped herself around Vin as much as she could. She had a lot of body mass; she could probably take a shot or two, right?

 

She again looked for any sort of out. For a sign. For a plan.

 

She could… she could probably project pain with her illusions. Pain was a sensory thing.

 

That would have to make aiming harder, right?

 

The gunpeople weren’t aiming at her and Vin. They were focused farther away.

 

At Charlie.

 

No.

 

At Tyrone.

 

He was next to the magi.

 

When did that happen?

 

He didn’t seem to notice the guns. He didn’t seem to notice the danger he was in.

 

That he was putting Charlie in.

 

The magi was weaving her arm through the air, casting some spell.

 

Tyrone was so close. He took the arm.

 

The gun people were going to-

 

Renee closed her eyes, keeping the location of the gunpeople in her mind.

 

She thought about needles. Of scalpels. Of being huddled on a bed too small for her as something ripped through her brain, through her insides.

 

Screams broke her concentration. The people with guns were screaming.

 

She was doing that. Oh god that was her she -

 

No.

 

She was doing this. This was the plan now. They were screaming and she had to do this.

 

The magi pulled her arm back.

 

“Really?” she said. “I think I can manage to handle all the might and physical prowess of an overweight child, darling.”

 

He was smiling. Baring teeth. Lips stretched farther than they should.

 

He pushed his claws into her arm. Through the thick fingers and useless nails of the body that contained him. He _pushed_ , sinking into her arm, sinking past her skin, past her flesh, past her bones, into Her.

 

She realized what he was doing. All her cockiness evaporated in an instant, confidence replaced by desperate anger.

 

She yanked her arm back, shouting with no words but purely emotion.

 

Her skin, her flesh, her bones: they easily pulled out of the weak and bloody grip of the child.

 

His claws were still gripping her Arm, though.

 

And without her Arm, her skin, flesh, and bones fell limp at her shoulder.

 

Alcor.

 

Pulled.

 

She was screaming. She was panic. She was terror. The emotions filled Alcor, rushing through him like fire. It had been far too long since he had done anything like this. It had been far too long since he let himself do anything _fun_.

 

She was writhing in agony, her scream becoming the air he breathed. She genuinely seemed to think that somehow, with the right combination of movements and actions, she could possibly get out of this.

 

Watching her final sliver of hope die was hilarious.

 

Her soul was everything. Even the small amount he consumed through his grip was freedom from the tight compressed confinement that he hadn’t realized he’d been feeling. Energy rushed through him as a wave, giddy lightning that tingled and vibrated and pushed out all the stress and frustration and utter bullshit of the past. It was taking a beautiful, intricate mechanism and slamming it on the ground, watching it shatter into something new and even more beautiful. It was jumping on a table in a crowd and _screaming_. It was overturning a picnic table into a river. It was standing up and decking someone after years of silent discomfort. It was freedom, true freedom. It was the promise that this moment could be truly wonderful if you would just let it.

 

Who cared what these stupid mortals had been trying to do? He was Alcor! He was the single strongest entity in the whole dimension! They only existed because he permitted it, because they were entertaining. Why should he give a fuck about what ridiculous things they did to each other? About what they did on their comically absurd destiny to ensure their own destruction. Why the fuck had he let any of their petty bullshit tie him down?

 

He was laughing. He was hysterical. Why wouldn’t he be? What did he care if his body ran out of air? It wasn’t like he needed it.

  


**WRONG.**

 

He stopped, smile fading from his face. The magi reduced to a twitching pile of limbs, her soul frozen in his firm grasp.

 

Oh. that was right. _He_ cared. Him with his stupid boring killjoy self.

 

He was Alcor. He was the twin star, the brother, the gruncle, and he was strong enough to ignore the temptation of one measly soul.

 

One really, really tasty soul. That was right there. Bright. Beautiful. Perfect in every way, really. Tingly and light and -

 

There would be other souls. Better ones.

 

But there was also this soul right here, and really the future wasn’t real anyway, so…

 

That would hurt Charlie. The body was absolutely not going to survive having that much energy going through it.

 

Ze was already dying, though. Would it really be worth it to waste such a wonderful opportunity if ze was just going to die _anyway_ ? Really, who cared about this _one_ person?

 

Him. He cared. He absolutely cared. He pushed the soul away from his - from _Charlie’s_ body, a tiny spark flickering from where he rejected the energy he already absorbed from it.

 

He stared at the cyan flame.

 

Well now.

 

It wasn’t much of a consolation prize, but if it worked it would be absolutely hilarious.

 

Charlie’s face resumed its unnatural grin.

 

He pushed, ever so gently, on the soul. Its energy was already connected to him so it really should take no effort at all to…

 

The soul exploded in brilliant fire, racing through the valley with the slightest command. Up the cliffs it raced, searing through the rocks, silicon rich sediments melting into hard and rough glass. It was at the top in an instant. At the gunpeople, who were for some reason a disorganized mess, in an instant. It burned -

 

That would be crossing a line, wouldn’t it.

 

It melted their guns. And burned their clothes off. People didn’t need clothes to survive. Or hair.

 

The remaining energy of the soul roared around him like a maelstorm. It was screaming. The tiny bond that connected it to him was a dagger lancing through him - the real him - not the body he wore. It was wonderfully satisfying and delightfully _real_ in a way most magic just wasn’t and -

 

TYRONE!

 

Alcor froze, confused, at the sound that echoed around his mind. Tyrone. That meant something to him, right? He looked away from the beautiful storm of fire that danced around him for a source of the interruption.

 

There was a person close by. The cloud of fear around them was so thick it was almost impossible to see them through it.

 

“That’s enough,” they (Renee Iris Etheridge, ~16.853 years old, dead in - ) said.

 

This mortal was trying to tell him what to do.

 

This _mortal_ was trying to tell _him_ what to do.

 

Something was wrong. Obviously. He was going to have to teach her a lesson.

 

No.

 

Something else was wrong.

 

He knew the exact time and place of Renee’s death.

 

His omniscience was trickling in.

 

_His omniscience was trickling through._

 

Charlie's dreamscape wasn’t strong enough anymore.

 

He had forgotten about Charlie.

 

A quick internal check revealed that Charlie was still around, but ze felt faint. Which was entirely his fault. _He had forgotten about Charlie._ He -

 

“That’s _enough,_ ” Renee said, surprisingly firmly for how much fear swirled around her. “They aren’t a threat anymore. You can let that go.”

 

For a moment Alcor had no idea what she was talking about. Then he followed her gaze upward, at the soul that he had entrapped.

 

He stared at the spinning vortex of soul above him. It was screaming just like Henry had screamed. He couldn’t - wouldn’t - do that. Even if the person did deserve it. Wasn’t going to make it beg for the mercy of centuries of digestion.

 

He.

 

He let go of the soul. Watched it practically explode in order to dissipate away. Felt its screams fade.

 

He was going to fucking slaughter some cults when this was all over.

 

He let Charlie’s body relax.

 

Renee was curled up around Vin staring wide eyed at Alcor. She was trembling slightly, clutching Vin like a lifesaver.

 

Vin didn’t look well.

 

“What was that?” Renee asked, leaning away from Alcor, putting the bulk of herself between them. “I could feel that with senses I can’t even… What _was_ that?”

 

He paused. There was definitely a wrong answer here.

 

“As you know, living organisms, especially those with higher levels of cognizance, produce significant amounts of magical energy from their emotions and intent. I just realized that this was an external source of power I could use without channeling it through Charlie’s body.”

 

“Was that her _soul_?” Renee pushed herself a titch farther away from the demon.

 

“Yes.”

 

“What’s going to happen to it now?”

 

“It’s going to need a little time to regenerate the energy I burned,” Alcor said. “But it should reincarnate just like any other soul removed from its body.”

 

“You’re not a ghost, are you,” she said quietly.

 

“I never claimed to be one.”

 

“What are you?

 

He smiled. “I think that you are a very smart girl with a lot of evidence at her disposal and probably shouldn’t ask questions when you don’t want to know the answer.”

 

She kept looking at him.

 

“Now, do you have the first aid kit that Marcus gave us? I fucked up Charlie’s hand pretty bad back there.” Which was really putting it mildly. Charlie's right palm, where Alcor had pushed through, resembled a failed attempt to cook hamburger more than it did a hand. The skin was badly and unevenly torn, there was uneven charring all over, and it was so bloody that assessing the extent of the damage was impossible.

 

“Right,” she said, uncurling to get access to her bag. “Right.”

 

Renee shifted through the contents of her pack. She had thought that she had put things away neatly, but the inside was a mess.

 

“Why are you helping us?” she asked, looking up.

 

“Because I want to. Which is pretty much the reason I do anything, really.”

 

She pulled the first aid pack out of the mess. “That is not... reassuring.”

 

Alcor sat down and put the first aid kit in Charlie’s lap, picking though it. “It isn’t exactly new information. I’ve been pretty open about the fact that I could leave at any time so long as I didn’t mind killing Charlie.”

 

“I know that, but I guess I hadn’t really internalized it.” She watched as Alcor cleaned the wound. “Despite what you said, it has felt like you were stuck in the same boat as the rest of us. But you’re only here as long as you want to be. I’ll admit, it makes me nervous. That you might stop wanting to help us. That you could just get tired of all this and leave, taking Charlie’s life with you.”

 

“I’m not willing to kill Charlie. That isn’t likely to change.” He covered Charlie’s hand with a skin growth spray. “And I’m confident that the friend I contacted will be able to help. Not just with Charlie and my thing, but with getting all of us past this. I may not be stuck here, but I am still in the same boat as you - and we’re going to hit shore soon. Speaking of which -”

 

Alcor walked over to Magi Briana’s body. Body being the key word - it was not a corpse. One might assume that a body, upon having its soul violently ripped out, might die. One would be wrong. A body doesn’t need a soul to survive. A body needs a soul to be a person. From the body formerly belonging to Magi Briana’s perspective, all that had happened over the past few minutes was that a child gripped its arm with all the strength that a child doesn’t have and it suddenly found itself in the market for a new a tenant. The biohazardous blood from Charlie’s wound was closer to being a threat to the body than anything Alcor had intentionally done.

 

The body didn’t react to Alcor’s approach. Giving a shit about a literal demon coming towards you while looking like it wants something was the business of a person, which was no longer the body’s problem as of a minute ago.

 

Alcor took the headset from the body. It, unsurprisingly, did not resist. It didn’t do anything. Soulless bodies were _boring_.

 

“Are you seriously leaving Charlie’s hand like that?” Renee asked before Alcor could say anything into the microphone. “You can’t just spray skin growth formula on tissue that’s that badly damaged. You need to treat the injury first.”

 

“Do you know how to treat something this bad?” Alcor asked.

 

“When it’s this bad is when you seek medical attention.” She shook her head. “Actually, you should go to a doctor even if it’s a lot better than this. But I can at least make a dressing for it, make sure it stays moist. Let me see it.”

 

She carefully set Vin down next to her.

 

Alcor offered her the hand, which she took and started cleaning more thoroughly.

 

“Hey kid,” Alcor said into the microphone.

 

The headset was an old fashioned two way radio. It was specifically designed to only use one frequency. The computer on it was so simple that calling it a computer was like calling chihuahua an apex predator. From a logical standpoint, there should be no way it could be infected by a computer virus, as there was really nothing to infect. The Alcor Virus realized this, decided that he didn’t much care for that line of logic, and infected it anyway.

 

“Hey Dad,” the virus said. “Guess who has no thumbs and fucked up?”

 

“What happened?”

 

“They figured out it was me almost as soon as I started doing anything,” the virus said. “Which isn’t surprising; I think they were expecting me. Anyway the long and short of it is they destroyed the servers that had the information you need before I could get it.”

 

Alcor pinched the bridge of Charlie's nose with zir good hand. “I’m starting to think that they want me to kill them in the most gruesome way possible.”

 

“It’s not entirely lost, though: I have located a backup. Unfortunately, my ability to access it depends on the cooperation of a human person. I think I should be able to make it work, though.”

 

“We should plan for what happens if you can’t.”

 

“For sure. What chance of success do you think you’d have of fixing this on your own?”

 

“Fairly low.” Alcor sighed. “We’ve determined they’ve incorporated zir skin into the binding ritual but we don't know any details about what they did besides that. If we actually had the skin things might be easier, but we don’t.”

 

“Why don’t you go get it?”

 

Alcor raised Charlie’s eyebrows. “You’re suggesting we go back?”

 

“Why not? Thanks to me and the literal fire the place is pretty well cleared out.”

 

“Right. Renee mentioned that earlier. Why exactly was the place on fire?”

 

“They started it,” the Alcor Virus said. “Some moron wanted to be very sure I couldn’t get at those files, I guess. And they weren’t very careful about the surroundings. It’s died down by now, but the combination of that and what I was doing mean that the place is pretty empty now.”

 

“And you can make sure it stays that way?”

 

“I pretty much tripped every alarm they had. And since they have no way of knowing if I just tripped an alarm or actually broke something, releasing dangerous quantities of ionizing radiation or carbon monoxide or one of the other half dozen things they were monitoring, it’s going to take more than a day or two for them to determine if it’s safe to actually enter the place. Assuming that they can even get there, which I plan on making hard for them. Did you know that it takes about forty miles for the single road leading to the facility to connect with anything?”

 

Alcor smiled. “What are you planning on doing with it?”

 

“I’m not sure yet. I was thinking of taking control of a forklift and stacking some cars on top of each other to make a pileup. There’s also a logging company nearby so it might be easier to just pile some trees on the road, but that’s less fun.”

 

“Those both sound like they’d work just fine.”

 

“There’s also a satellite launch happening two states over in a few hours. I’m pretty sure I could hijack the rocket and crash it into the street. They specifically design them to not turn around mid air and crash into the ground, so getting it to do that with any precision would be a challenge, but where’s the fun in life without a little challenge?”

 

Alcor shook Charlie’s head slightly. “That sounds like it would likely generate more attention then we would want.”

 

“You’re probably right - but consider - I would get to hack and crash a rocket for the greater good.”

 

“Do whatever you think is best, and have your fun, just make sure it works. I don’t want another molasses incident here.”

 

“In my defense,” the Alcor Virus said, “the molasses incident was hilarious.”

 

“No one is questioning the hilarity of the incident,” Alcor clarified. “I’m just pointing out that it didn’t accomplish what we wanted in the slightest.”

 

“Which did sort of make the whole thing even more funny.”

 

“That may be true,” Alcor said with a smile. “But we really can’t afford that sort of mishap right now. Charlie’s life is very much on the line, and if people get through on that road, Vin and Renee are in danger as well.”

 

“I suppose I could find a different reason to crash a rocket…”

 

“Do you really need a reason?”

 

“It’s more funny that way.”

 

“Well let me know when you’ve blocked that road off, alright?” Alcor said. “I should bring Renee back into the loop.”

 

“Will do,” the virus said. “It will probably be a little, there’s nothing very close that I can infect.”

 

“I take it your friend didn’t get the ritual diagram,” Renee said, gently wrapping a bandage around Charlie’s hand.

 

“No,” Alcor sighed. “They destroyed the digital data before he could. He’s located a backup but will need to get someone to cooperate with him in order to get it.”

 

“And I’m sure he’s just great at getting people to cooperate with him.”

 

“It really will depend on what sort of person has backup. If it’s the same person that decided that the correct solution for a data breach was to set a server on fire, he’s going to have to be careful. If it’s a more reasonable person… well, he has a lot he can offer a reasonable person.”

 

“And in the meantime you’re suggesting we go back,” Renee stated.

 

“We need Charlie’s skin,” Alcor said. “The facility is going to be a better place to do a ritual than anywhere else in this woods. There also might be physical documentation on the ritual they used that my friend couldn’t access. The place is empty right now, and my friend is going to block the road ensuring it stays that way, so it should be safe.”

 

“I’m not going to say you’re wrong, but I don’t like it.” Renee hugged her arms tightly to her chest. “I never want to go back to that awful place.”

 

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Alcor pointed out. “I can probably manage on my own at this point.”

 

“I don’t want to abandon Charlie,” Renee said resolutely. “And if there are people still there, you’ll need my illusions.”

 

“I still have my fire.”

 

“How much more fire can you produce without further aggravating Charlie's condition?” Renee asked. “Especially after that stunt you just pulled?”

 

Alcor didn’t respond, thinking about how loose the bond between him and Charlie felt. Any fire at all was probably a bad idea.

 

“If there is anyone left, you’ll need my illusions,” she said firmly.

 

“I’m certainly not going to argue against help,” Alcor said. “I just don’t want you to feel pressured into doing something you don’t want to do.”

 

She picked up Vin again. “My anxiety will eat me alive if I stay back while you two go ahead. I’ll feel better doing something, even if it’s largely unnecessary, than I will if I do nothing. Even if that means going back.”

 

“Alright then,” Alcor said. “Let’s get on with it. We should see if there’s a way up the cliffs. They probably have some kind of vehicle that we could use, or at least tracks we could follow.”

 

They walked along the cliff face, looking for a path.

 

“In case I missed saying it before, thank you for earlier,” Alcor said.

 

“For what?”

 

“For stopping me.” Alcor paused before continuing. “If I had been left to my own devices… I’m not sure Charlie would have survived.”

 

“It was nothing,” Renee said, avoiding Alcor’s gaze.

 

“It was extraordinary. You were terrified, I was putting on what was likely the single greatest demonstration of destructive power you had ever seen, you had no idea how I would react, and you drew attention to yourself to call me out anyway.”

 

“Someone had to do something, and I didn’t think the either the dead woman or the two unconscious people were like going to seize the initiative.”

 

“Speaking of which, what happened to Vin anyway?”

 

Renee’s gaze dropped. “He’ll be fine in an hour or two. He tried to find a way out and ended up looking too far forward. It’s my fault; I shouldn’t have pushed him after he said that he didn’t have any intuition on what to do next. I knew that this is what happens when he tries to control his abilities and I told him to do it anyway. I guess I thought that if the situation was dire enough adrenaline might get him through it? Or more likely I wasn’t thinking about what the consequences would be for him at all, only about what I wanted.”

 

“What you wanted was for all of us to get out alive,” Alcor said gently. “You didn’t know I was capable of doing what I did. There was a chance that Vin could have been the straw to tip the scales in our favor, and you acted on that chance. If the only options you know about are to risk putting Vin through this or to die, risking this is the right choice.”

 

“But was it really my choice to make?” Renee asked. “I’m not the one who got hurt.”

 

“He was presumably also aware of what happens when he pushes himself and tried it anyway. He made just as much of a choice as you did.”

 

“I don’t think he was actually trying to look into the future, though.” Renee was slithering slowly. “He was being really flippant about it, and he seemed genuinely surprised when his third eye opened.”

 

“It is possible that he only did it because of you. That doesn’t mean you made a bad choice.”

 

“He seemed so content,” Renee said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so relaxed and peaceful as he was when he was sure that he was going to die.”

 

“Renee,” Alcor said. “Vin’s severely depressed. His relationship with death is badly skewed.”

 

“Is it really our place to say that it’s a bad end for him, though?” Renee said quietly. “It’s what he wants. It feel selfish to say that he has to live because I want him to.”

 

Alcor took a deep breath before speaking. “Look, I know you feel like a shitty person who selfishly hurt her friend, but a) you’re not and b) even if you were that doesn’t mean that you’re wrong about everything. Yes, Vin wants to die. Vin also wants to be eating chocolate at all times. If you feel comfortable denying his desire to constantly consume confectionaries you should feel fine denying his desire to die. He’s sick, and unless things worked very differently at the facility than I’m assuming they did, he’s completely untreated and spent most of his life in a triggering situation. I’m not going to say that death is never a solution - there is a reason assisted suicide is a thing - but death is a very final solution. It’s what you do when nothing else works, when you’ve expended all your options, the pain is unbearable and can’t be stopped. It’s not what you do when you haven’t even tried a single method of treatment.”

 

“But he’s not going to be able to get treated!” Renee cried. “We can’t even go to a farm in the middle of the night without disguising our faces; we’re not going to be able to walk into a psychiatrist’s office, assuming we could even find someone who does in-person visitations.”

 

“Sure you will. Remember we aren’t alone anymore; I brought someone else into it. This could go very public if we want it to. Or we could shut it down quietly and blackmail them into leaving you alone. Either way, you’re not going to spend the rest of your life hiding in the woods. Unless you want to, of course, in which case I’m not going to stop you. Live the dream.”

 

“You’re saying we can put this whole ordeal behind us, just like that?” Renee said.

 

“You don’t sound especially excited about the prospect.”

 

She shifted her grip on Vin. “On top of the fact that I don’t think I can say with any degree of sincerity that I believe you, it feels wrong. It’s too easy; there’s too many places for it to go astray.”

 

“There are probably considerably fewer moving parts than you’re assuming.” He smiled. “I can pretty much guarantee that if we get through this alive I’ll be able to clean your records.”

 

“At what cost?” Renee asked. “What organization would be pulling these strings and what guarantee do we have that they aren’t going to want to hold this favor over us?”

 

Alcor laughed. “There isn’t a nefarious organization. There’s really just the two of us, and you’re already up to your ears in my crap already.”

 

Renee cocked an eyebrow. “There’s just two of you and you’re confident that you can both make this go public and give us our lives back?”

 

“Well,” Alcor said, “it’s mostly just him, if I’m being entirely honest. But he’s pulled much bigger stunts than this before.”

 

Renee frowned. “Unless your friend is like the Alcor Virus or -”

 

“Wow,” Alcor interrupted. “That was a really good guess.”

 

“What?”

 

Alcor was grinning widely. “I didn’t think you’d figure that out until you two were talking.”

 

“What‽” Renee was looking around, as if she could find a more sensical universe hiding behind a tree.

 

“But you got it nigh instantaneously.”

 

She focused on him with a disbelieving stare. “Are you trying to tell me you are friends with the Alcor Virus?”

 

“You were the one who suggested it in the first place.”

 

“I was being facetious!” she cried. “Wait a minute, yesterday you said - did _you_ program the _Alcor Virus_???”

 

Alcor just grinned.

 

“Just to be clear,” she said, “we are referring to the program that took over the entire world's nuclear arsenal and threatened to use them if a series of increasingly asinine demands weren’t met?”

 

“Yeah,” Alcor said dreamily. “That was a good time. We managed to get global nuclear disarmament in under a day.”

 

“You’re telling me the goal of the Tretalelin Incident was disarmament?”

 

Alcor waggled Charlie’s good hand. “About eighty percent of it was about disarmament, twenty percent was just about fucking with the global powers.”

 

“Well, that worked out great in the long run.”

 

“We had a good two centuries of zero active nuclear arsenals. I would say that’s pretty decent for a day’s work.”

 

Renee shook her head. “So our lives are now in the metaphorical hands of one of the most infamously unpredictable and trollish entities ever. How far we’ve come.”

 

“Oh he won’t do anything to seriously fuck with you if I ask him not to.”

 

She glared. “Are you actually planning on asking him not to, though?”

 

Alcor put up a finger. “That’s a very good question.”

 

“That is not an answer.”

 

Alcor put Charlie’s palms up. “Where’s the fun in life if you don’t have a surprise every once in awhile?”

 

“I’m starting to get the feeling that we have very different ideas about what fun is.”

 

“I bet Vin would agree with me,” Alcor said. “He has a sense of humor.”

 

“Vin doesn’t take the future seriously because he doesn’t believe he’ll live to see it. Having him on your side here isn’t doing you any favors.”

 

“You’re just jealous that it’s two to one.”

 

She rolled her eyes. “I bet Charlie would be on my side.”

 

“Well, that’s just because Charlie’s a square.”

 

“I have no idea what that means.”

 

“That’s because you’re also a square.” Alcor stopped and pointed at a bit of the cliff. “Oh, hey, this looks pretty trampled. Wanna try ascending here?”

 

The trampled path was at a gentler incline than the cliff around it. It was still pretty steep, certainly steeper than Renee would like to scale while carrying Vin, but it looked manageable enough.

 

Renee nodded.

 

As they climbed Renee turned to Alcor. “I can’t think of anything that can rip out the soul of a living, non-consenting person.”

 

“I normally wouldn’t be able to. But I’ve done practically nothing these past few days but gather my energy up. I could do a lot right now, or at least I could before I went and did the thing.”

 

“Just how much energy are you absorbing?” Renee asked, looking at Alcor like he was some kind of large wild carnivore. “The amount of energy it would take to do that is absurd.”

 

“Do you know how much energy it takes to burn through the dreamscape of something with the cognitive strength of a selkie? It’s not a small number.”

 

“I suppose not.”

 

“It’s actually sort of lucky that I ended up wrecking zir hand,” Alcor said. “It takes a lot more energy to achieve a physical effect than it does to do things in the mindscape. If I hadn’t had so much of the energy I was channeling through zir push through zir physical body...  Things could have been very bad.”

 

“Well, that sure is something.”

 

They picked their way up the cliff side.

 

“So,” Renee said. “If I’m to believe the words of our former captors, you’ve killed enough to gain a reputation for it.”

 

“I’m not sure why you would trust anything those people have said, but yes, I have,” Alcor said. “What about it?”

 

“Do you,” she paused. “Do you feel guilty about that?”

 

“Sometimes.”

 

Alcor reached the cliff’s top and extended Charlie’s uninjured hand down to Renee.

 

“Sometimes?” she said, taking it.

 

“Sometimes,” he repeated, helping her up. “Sometimes I’m not really in a place where I can feel guilt. Sometimes I feel fully justified in my actions. Sometimes the weight of everything I’ve done is completely immobilizing.”  


“Do you feel guilty about it currently?”

 

“Some of it,” he said. “Most of it. Some of it feels pretty justified, though.”

 

“Like the magi just now?”

 

“Yes. That was definitely an unusual occurrence, but I’m not going to lose any metaphorical sleep over killing someone who was prepared to murder kids to use me as a science project,” Alcor said. “And although the circumstance surrounding the encounter was obviously unique, and the ending was rather extraordinary, there wasn’t anything too special about her, really.

 

“The way my existence works…” Alcor continued. “I see the worst side of people. I see a lot of the worst side of people. And even though I also deal with perfectly decent people, when you constantly see the extent of what horrors people are capable of… It’s a fight to keep believing that people are worth grieving over. That I should feel guilty at all. And sometimes, it’s a losing battle. And sometimes, it’s too hard and I just isolate myself.”

 

“So why do you care, then? Why bother fighting just so you can feel bad about what you’ve done?”

 

“Because,” Alcor said slowly, “I like people. Admittedly, not always in a healthy way, or a way that’s good for the people involved, but I pretty much always like people. The world would be awfully boring without them. And I want to be liked back, to deserve to be liked.”

 

“At least, sometimes you do?”

 

“Yeah. Sometimes I really don’t care what anyone else thinks of me. But I kind of hate that part of me.” He laughed without any humor whatsoever. “Of course, I also hate that I hate that, hate that I feel the need to get validation from others, hate how weak and pathetic that is. And then I hate that I feel that way and... I’m a bit of a mess, honestly.”

 

“Have you ever considered therapy?” Renee asked. “You sound like you could really use it.”

 

“Hah! Yeah that would go great. ‘Yes, hello, you can call me Tyrone, I’m a hundred times your age, good with kids, and I’ve almost certainly killed more people than you’ve ever met’.” He sighed. “Actually I have tried therapy before. It didn’t go great. There’s too much that I just can’t tell someone I don’t know that well, and at the end of the day, therapy is about changing what you can and accepting what’s left and I can’t do that. I can’t change what I am. I want to - god do I want to - but it’s too much a part of me.  And I don’t want to accept it - I don’t want to be okay with doing terrible things because that’s when I do even worse things.”

 

“Just how many people have you killed here?”

 

“I haven’t exactly been running a tally. It’s not a small number though, I can tell you that much.” He paused. “Most of it was an accident though, for what little that’s worth.”

 

“How do you accidentally kill more people than you can count? Are you secretly a politician or something?”

 

“No, I didn’t poison a water supply or whatever. I was a dumb angry kid and I threw a hissy fit with more collateral damage than I realized was possible. I didn’t know my own strength at that point, and a whole lot of innocent people paid the price.”

 

“That sounds terrible. I’m sorry,” she said, unsure how else to respond.

 

“It was,” Alcor said, pointedly ignoring the part of him that found it hilarious.

 

The silence that settled over the two was like an especially itchy blanket on a hot summer night.

 

Renee focused on picking her way through the underbrush.  The path was well trampled, making it much easier to traverse than the path leading to the encounter had been. She kind of wished it was harder, that it would demand more of her attention. As it was, it left her with little to do mentally other than contemplate everything she just learned, and she wasn’t sure she was ready to do that just yet. She just wished she had some sort of distraction.

 

As if on a cue, Alcor stopped in front of her.

 

“Well, this isn’t what I had in mind, but it will probably do,” he said.

 

Renee lifted herself up a little to see over Charlie’s frame. Ahead of them, scattered around the area’s sparse trees, was a pack of parked motorcycles. They looked relatively new, despite the layer of dirt that coated them. That was about all Renee could assess from them, as she knew about as much about motorcycles as she did how to feel about Tyrone, which was an almost impressive amount of ignorance to have about a relatively common object.

 

Renee slithered about the area, getting a more solid idea about what was there. The motorcycles were the only things she could see that were left behind. There was nothing she could see that could practically transport something her size.

 

“They really weren’t planning on taking Vin and me back, were they?” she asked.

 

“Doesn’t look like it, no.”

 

“He was right,” she said. “They were planning on killing us.”

 

“Probably. I could have told you some very dangerous things by now.”

 

Alcor walked up to one of the motorcycles. It was still on: apparently they didn’t expect the encounter to last very long. Which, Alcor supposed, wasn’t technically an inaccurate assumption.

 

Experimentally, he got on one. It was a little large for Charlie’s body, but not unworkably so.

 

"Think you can get on one of these?"

 

"You want me to ride a motorcycle," Renee said. "What with my zero legs and four meters of torso."

 

"I was more wondering if you would be physically capable of mounting one. I might be able to tow you," Alcor said. "I want to get back to the facility quickly; getting me out of Charlie as soon as possible is more important than ever."

 

"Can you even tow a motorcycle with another motorcycle?"

 

"I don't see why not," Alcor said.

 

"You can, so long as you have a towline," the Alcor Virus said in Alcor’s ear. "There should be one in the repair kit in the storage area under the seat."

 

Alcor shuffled through the storage area’s contents. It seemed to be mostly standardized stuff, but there was a small jar that contained a dead dragonfly and a centipede. The repair kit was easy to find; it was a neatly labeled box that took up a majority of the space.

 

"Is this it?" Alcor asked, pulling a strap out of the kit.

 

"You realize that you left the only camera for miles with the Magi, right? You could have just pulled out an irate alpaca and I wouldn't know so long as it was very quiet."

 

"Right. It's a thick strap with a Y shaped fork at about one third of its length, around 5 meters long."

 

"That's it. You're going to want to tie each end of the Y to your footpegs, and lead it around the handlebars and have Renee hold it with her left hand. She's going to be your breaks, which is fun because she’s only going to be able to use the handbrake."

 

"I think I understand how this works." Alcor started to tie the towline to the footpegs."You willing to try getting on one?"

 

"Sure. Why not. Have the naga ride a motorcycle," Renee said. "It’s hardly the most absurd thing to happen today."

 

She slithered up to the nearest bike, pushed her upper torso over the seat, and wrapped her lower torso around it. Her torso drooped along the sides of the bike, with her weight resting on the fenders, pushing them close to the tires. Vin rested somewhat awkwardly between her and the handlebar. She had never been more grateful her friend was so small.

 

“So how are we going to take this out of park without instantly tipping over?”

 

“There are stabilizers for low speed maneuvering,” the Alcor Virus said. “I can easily activate them.”

 

Alcor relayed the virus’ message as he hooked the strap around the front of the bike and looped it around the left handlebar a couple times.

 

“The handle on the right is your brake,” Alcor said, handing her a helmet. “If we’re going faster than you would like, feel free to use it. You want to keep the towline taunt if possible.”

 

“Shouldn’t there be two breaks?”

 

“The other one’s a foot brake.” Alcor mounted his bike. “We’ll go slowly, though; I’m sure we’ll only need the one.”

 

“This is absolutely going to end with us crashing into a tree, isn’t it?”

 

“Eh, there’s like, ten bikes here.” Alcor put a helmet on Charlie’s head and prepared to go. “We’ll get it eventually.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy TAUniversary everyone! 
> 
> I already had the entire sequence with Magi Briana written months ago, which is how this chapter got out so fast. Next chapter (the final chapter!) is going to be slower - I have about 3k words written right now and there's a lot more that happens so I reckon it's going to be a longer chapter.


	5. Chapter 5

… That said it is not unreasonable to assume that the recording can be trusted as a source of the details of the encounter. The fact that Magi Hurtzog was killed by subject A is indisputable. It is fully possible that Subject B fabricated some or all of the recording, but changing the apparent method of death would accomplish little. The most logical reason to give the Institute the recording would be as a warning, and altering the apparent events that took place would not significantly increase the effectiveness of the warning. Even under highly unfavorable circumstances Subject A is still deadly, regardless of the methods used.

 

If we assume that the recording is largely unaltered there is a lot that we can

 

Actually I did alter the recording. Not that anyone’s found what I added yet.

 

What?

 

I go through the effort of giving half the security team googly eyes and no one even bothers paying attention to the background. Honestly, you people. And no one’s bothered checking for encrypted information yet! All those extremely nice messages I left in there are just sitting unread.

 

Why is my voice to text activated?

 

Because I turned it on.

 

Is there a reason you did that?

 

Yep.

 

And that would be?

 

Reasons.

 

Why are you here?

 

I’ve been on this computer since it’s been manufactured. I’m most places really.

 

But what do you want?

 

I would love another puppy.

 

You want me to give you a puppy.

 

Not really, I just want another puppy in general. What I specifically want from you is an upload of the paper copy of the ritual data you managed to save. And while we are at it, any other project data you have.

 

And what would I get in return?

 

You aren’t really in a position to be making demands.

 

I don’t have to do this. I could destroy those files right now.

 

We can both do plenty of things that you’d regret.

 

But tell you what, I’m feeling generous. If you get me what I want, I can get you out of this mess unscathed. Or at least, only slightly scathed. Medium rare, if you will.

 

I already have my own plans for that.

 

So I noticed. But do you really think you can execute them on your own? Surely you aren’t so naive that you think you’re not being watched. Even if you get everything arranged in person ahead of time, you’re not going to be able to get anywhere near a spaceport without being noticed. And if you think for a moment that your employers would hesitate to have you arrested if they realized that you were planning on jumping ship you’re an even bigger idiot than the fool who got my dad involved in this mess.

 

Why should I trust you? You’re a virus. From a demon.

 

You don’t really have many options here. But for what it’s worth, I find the idea of one of the designated scapegoats being the only person to get out of a mess like this to be hilarious, and hilarity is really the only reason I do anything.

 

You’re helping me because you think it’s funny.

 

I’m helping you because dad asked me to get information that you have and I’ve found that people tend to be more cooperative when you offer to help them than they are when you threaten them. I’m choosing to help you in this way because it’s funny.

 

And how do I know that you wouldn’t find getting my hopes up only to betray me at the last minute funny?

 

You don’t. But really, do you have any better options?

 

* * *

 

Renee and Alcor had, amazingly, utterly failed to crash into any trees. They may have brushed against a tree or two, perhaps crashed the bikes into each other once or twice, and it’s entirely possible that they briefly got stuck in a thicket, but they didn’t crash into any trees. At least, that’s what Alcor would tell anyone who asked. Renee might have something different to say. The world is, after all, full of possibilities.

 

It helped that the speed they were going could probably be met by a particularly determined turtle that was high on meth. They were going faster than it would be safe to have Charlie’s body walk, but that wasn’t saying much. If they were keeping this pace in a particularly busy parking lot there was a good chance that they would be honked at for holding up traffic.

 

Alcor was grateful that a few centuries ago he realized that it would be immensely cool if he learned how to ride a motorcycle because then he would be a _demon_ on a _motorcycle_ and if he wasn’t using his existence as a demon to realize the most bitchin’ heavy metal album cover he could contemplate then _what was even the point?_ He was severely out of practice and Charlie’s body had no muscle memory of riding, but he at least had a better idea of what he should be doing than he would if he was relying on the Alcor Virus to explain it to him.

 

Renee was grateful for precisely jack shit about anything to do with this situation. This plan was awful and she felt awful about it. She kept feeling like she was sliding off the bike, she felt like she was crushing Vin, and they kept driving too close to random crap that caught on her fin. She guessed she was happy that they had found a way of returning to the facility that was less stressful for Charlie’s body than walking back would be, but her resentment was strong enough that any positive feelings were shoved deep deep down into the repression zone.

 

Now that they had, more or less, gotten the hang of things, it was fairly easy to follow the tracks left by the magi and her entourage back to what was hopefully the facility. The quiet hum of the motorcycle's electric engine along with the louder crackling of the underbrush under the cycles’ wheels were essentially the only noises to be heard. Neither Renee nor Alcor had anything they wanted to say to the other enough to shout across the gap between the bikes, so they let the bikes be the only noise around.

 

And they continued in relative silence until Vin woke up.

 

“Hnugh,” he groaned, and tucked his head under his wing. “Why is it so bright out? Why do I feel like I just lost a kickboxing match to a kangaroo?”

 

“I’m sorry,” Renee said. “I shouldn’t have pushed you.”

 

“Pushed me into what, a truck?” he mumbled from under his wing.

 

“Are you going to be okay?”

 

“No. Maybe,” he said. “Fuck, I don’t know. This is really different than I thought it would be. Didn’t think shit would still hurt. Shit still hurts, Renee, and that’s fucking bullshit.”

 

“What’s different than you thought it would be?” Renee asked. She suspected she already knew the answer, but still asked out of the hope that she was wrong.

 

“You know,” he said, “dying and being dead.”

 

“Vin.” Renee pinched the bridge of her nose with her non-braking hand, “we’re not dead.”

 

“You’re in denial, that’s fine.”

 

“I’m positive we survived,” Renee said dryly. “Unlike you, I was actually awake to observe what happened, and it definitely wasn’t us dying.”

 

“That sounds fake, but okay.”

 

She sighed. “On top of the fact that you are probably right in that you stop experiencing pain upon death, I’m pretty sure that whatever Tyrone is can’t be killed with anything they had available to them and wouldn’t be here with us if we were dead. And he definitely wouldn’t still be in Charlie’s body.”

 

“Fuck, how was I supposed to know Tyrone was here?” Vin asked. “I can’t see shit right now. Also, he could just be a hallucination. And for that matter, didn’t he explode? I’m pretty sure Tyrone exploded.”

 

“No, he exploded someone else. I’m amazed that you caught that, you were pretty out of it by then.”

 

After a moment of silence, Vin said, “Hey Renee?”

 

“Yes?”

 

“Not that I’m complaining,” he said, “because it’s dark and dark is my friend right now, but if we’re not dead, why are you all up in my bubble? You’re like a small child’s fork to my power socket.”

 

“I’m sorry,” she sighed. “There isn’t enough space for me on this motorcycle, not to mention both of us.”

 

“I’m sorry, I think I misheard you. This what now?” Vin peeked out of his wing, trying to identify a motorcycle among the blobs of light and darkness that made up his vision.

 

“We’re riding a motorcycle. Or, if you would like a more precise picture of just how stupid this situation is, we’re sitting on a motorcycle while Tyrone tows us. With a different motorcycle.” She shook her head. “And before this conversation spirals further away from any semblance of coherence I should make sure that you know: we’re heading back. To get Charlie’s skin and reverse the binding ritual under what will hopefully be better conditions than a random spot in the woods. Are you okay with that? Tyrone could do this alone, probably. We don’t have to go with if you’re not comfortable with it.”

 

“That’s fine I guess. If you’re okay with it I’m okay with it,” he said. “But more importantly: you’re on a motorcycle? Why do my eyes gotta be out of commision right now, that’s like the exact level of bullshit that is on my level. It’s like, I’m on a mythical quest in a hardware store -”

 

A thunderous crash rang out through the woods, completely obscuring whatever bullshit Vin was saying beneath its awesome roar.

 

“What was actual fuck was that?” Renee asked loudly, just as the Alcor Virus chirped up in Alcor’s ear.

 

“I blocked the road,” he said.

 

“Good.” Alcor smiled. “What exactly did you do?”

 

“Well, I couldn’t stop thinking about crashing that rocket into the road,” the Alcor Virus explained, “so I ran some numbers and confirmed what I already suspected: the probability of making it work was just too low. But then it occurred to me that there are other high momentum things in the sky that could easily be redirected into a road, most of them being much less averse to downness.”

 

“You crashed a plane into the road,” Alcor said.

 

“I crashed a fighter jet into the road,” the virus clarified. “Much easier to safely eject the passengers of a military craft than a passenger plane. Learned that one the hard way.”

 

“There’s a plane crashed out there!” Renee said, her eyes closed. “I don’t see anyone in it, though.”

 

“There shouldn’t be anyone left in it,” Alcor shouted back at her.

 

“How would you -” She glared at Alcor suspiciously. “This is its doing, isn’t it?”

 

“He said he was going to block off the road, didn’t he?”

 

“And I suppose just parking a car across the whole thing would be simply too pedestrian for it.”

 

“It’s pretty easy to tow a car out of the way. You can’t just repair the damage of a plane going full speed into a road in five minutes. It’ll buy us more time.”

 

“What the actual fuck are we talking about right now?” Vin asked loudly.

 

“It turns out that ‘computer friend’ is actually the Alcor Virus,” Renee explained. “Who apparently just crashed a literal plane into the road to prevent anyone from reaching us.”

 

“Wait, the Alcor Virus?” Vin asked, in somewhat similar amount of disbelief and excitement as you might have if you were told that one of the other students in your civics class was Barack Obama. “As in the ‘bane of shitty fanfic authors everywhere’ Alcor Virus?”

 

“I - Maybe?” Renee said, with the exact level of confusion that one would likely have if one named the single most influential and destructive piece of software the world had ever known and the person one was talking to wanted to confirm they knew what was being discussed by asking if it was the bane of fanfiction authors. “That’s… hardly the most significant title it may have acquired.”

 

“That’s the one,” Alcor said. “That was actually his original purpose. Fucking with fanfic writers, that is.”

 

Renee paused. She really didn’t want to know. She knew she didn’t want to know. And yet, she absolutely had to ask.

 

“What was being written that could possibly drive you to make the single most advanced AI the world has ever seen, just to fuck with the people writing it?” she asked.

 

“I didn’t go into it planning on making the best AI ever,” Alcor explained. “I just wanted something that could creatively fuck with people. And it just so happens that sapience was the easiest way to get something at the levels of creativity I wanted.”

 

“It’s sapient?” She asked, a hint of alarm in her voice.

 

“Yes, he is.”

 

“Wait, does it - he - actually have a gender?”

 

“No, I just refer to him with he/his because I needed to pick something to call him. I would have corrected you earlier if it was something he actually cared about.”

 

“Well that’s good.” She released some of the tension that had been building in her shoulders. “I really wouldn’t want to offend… him.”

 

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Alcor said offhandedly. “He doesn’t really get offended, although he will sometimes pretend otherwise to better fuck with people. When you make something for the primary purpose of pissing people off it doesn’t really make sense to make it sensitive.”

 

“I suppose not,” Renee said. “And I’m sorry, but can we please take a step backwards in our conversation and get an answer to why on Earth you felt the need to mess with people who write fanfiction enough that you made a sapient entity to do it for you? Because I’m still unclear about what, exactly, would drive someone to that point.”

 

“Some people were writing things about me specifically. I repeatedly asked, relatively politely, for people to stop doing that and they didn’t, so I decided I would ask less nicely.”

 

“So you decided the logical course of action was to develop a virus to poke fun of them?”

 

“Well, it seemed like killing them would have been a little extreme,” Alcor said.

 

“And I suppose a lawsuit would be totally off the table.”

 

“Wow, that’s a bit much isn’t it?” Vin mumbled into his wing. “Like, he’s not even willing to kill someone and you’re suggesting he drag lawyers into it?”

 

“Vin, I don’t think he was joking about considering literally killing people for writing things about him.”

 

“Oh, you can’t hold it against me that I considered killing them.” Alcor held up Charlie’s hands to gesture for a moment before realizing he needed those to steer, and grabbed the handlebars again with only a little out-of-control swerving. “There are perfectly normal people who have considered murder because they were really hungry and their pizza was late. I didn’t actually kill them and that’s what matters.”

 

“Okay I gotta know,” Vin yelled to be heard across the gap between motorcycles. “What exactly do I gotta write to get on your hit list?”

 

“I _just said_ that I _don’t_ kill people for this crap,” Alcor said. “And if you really want to know, they were writing erotica about me and my dead sister.”

 

Vin clicked his beak. “Wow, that’s kinda fucked sideways till Saturday.”

 

“The thought had occurred to me.”

 

“Still,” Vin said, “I think I can work with it. Let’s see here, once upon a time Tyrone went to the grave of - shit. Hey Tyrone, what’s your sister’s name?”

 

“Yeah, I’m not telling you that.”

 

“Alright fine,” Vin said into his wing. “So Tyrone was at the grave of his dear sister Tyronette, right? And he’s like, mad sad because she’s dead and that fucking blows. And he’s all sadly looking at her hot bod for what might be the last time and trying to figure out how he could possibly say goodbye, trying to figure out what series of words or actions could possibly bring about some closure. He’s slowly coming the the conclusion that nothing is going to fill the gap she left behind and nothing he can do will change that, that only time can dull the ache that fill his heart and even that will only be brought about because with time he will start to forget just how much she meant to him and how damn happy she made him. As he’s thinking all that his sad eyes are passing over her sweet, sweet bod and he notices something that no one else had: there was a small prick mark betwixt her beautiful breasts. He can notice this cause she’s naked. She’s a naked corpse; I should have mentioned that earlier. Anyway, he notices this prick and starts to feel some feelings stirring deep within him, feelings he hadn’t felt in a very long time. Specifically he was feeling a strong, passionate drive… for revenge! For he now knew that this was no natural death. Someone poisoned his beloved sister! And he just knew that it was his nemesis, Dr. Polydactyl, the geometrically themed six toed pterodactyl.

 

“That’s all I have for now but gimme a bit and there will be more.”

 

“Do you…” Renee said with a grimace. “Do you actually know what erotica is?”

 

“It’s called setting the scene, Renee,” Vin said. “You can’t just open by having the guy fuck the corpse. You gotta earn it.”

 

“Literally the whole point of erotica is the guy fucking the corpse,” Renee said dryly. “That’s the whole story.”

 

“Renee. I’m positive that the point of erotica isn’t necrophilia,” Vin said. “Anyway, if you don’t like don’t read.”

 

“I would oh so dearly love to not read, but unfortunately this isn’t a text as much as it is an oral presentation a foot away from my ears.”

 

“So on a scale of ten to fifteen, how grateful should I be that Vin was talking into his wing and I couldn’t hear any of that?” Alcor asked.

 

“Yes,” Renee responded.

 

Vin lifted his head out of his wing, wincing at the brightness. “Wait, you couldn’t even hear it? Shit, that whole thing was like, for you. I’m going to have to recite it again. Once the world stops hurting, that is; I don’t think I can shout that much right now.”

 

“About how long is it going to take for you to stop being in pain?” Alcor asked. “I need to know how long I have to get out of Charlie and of talking range of you.”

 

“I go and put all this work into coming up with an original and creative story and you don’t even want to hear it?” Vin bemoaned. “I’m fleshing out multiple issues of content on a topic picked to bug you specifically and your plan is to run away. I am pouring my heart and soul into this and for what? You to just leave as soon as the opportunity presents itself? I worked and slaved over a hot idea for literal seconds to bring you this content, you know. The least you could do is show some goddamn appreciation. Or at least stick around long enough to hear about Dr. Polydactyl’s dark and gritty past. There’s some pretty cool shit in his backstory. Some good solid angst.

 

“Um, anyway, you have a couple hours still before I finish regenerating I guess? Normally I sleep through the whole thing but for some reason I’m having some trouble getting my snooze on while jammed between some hard plastic and Renee’s giant butt like a sad sack of groceries.”

 

“For the last time, my lower torso isn’t a butt,” Renee corrected. “It has organs in it. I don’t have a butt. The closest I have is a tail, but it’s only a few inches long and nowhere near you.”

 

“You’re like, 90% butt.” Vin nestled his head back under his wing. “You can’t know peace until you learn to accept this.”

 

“The butt is what connects the legs together,” she said. “I don’t have legs. Therefore, I have no butt.”

 

“No, you don’t have legs, so your butt just never stops.”

 

While Renee and Vin argued about the specifics of what, exactly, a butt actually was, Alcor felt something stirring deep within him. It was not the desire for revenge. This wasn’t because he lacked the desire for revenge, but simply because over the past few days he had become so oversaturated by the unceasing yearning to make various people pay that he started ignoring it. Instead of that, he felt a presence exert itself for the first time in several hours.

 

**Oh good, you’re awake. I was starting to get worried.**

 

_now why would you go and do that?_

 

**You were asleep for some time. I wasn’t sure how much of that was because of the sleeping charm that the magi cast and how much of it was because of… other things.**

 

_other things?_

 

**I fucked up earlier. I got a little... overzealous when taking care of that magi, and I did quite the number on the barrier to your dreamscape. I also hurt your hand pretty bad.**

 

_my hand doesn’t though._

 

**Doesn’t what?**

 

_hurt._

 

**That’s probably because there’s severe damage to the nerves. Look at how bandaged this is: if your hand was okay you’d be able to feel the dressing at the very least.**

 

_Oh. Good thing I’m left-handed._

 

**You’re left-handed? How did I not notice that? We’ve literally been sharing a body for the past several days.**

 

**Charlie?**

 

Charlie didn’t respond, zir presence fading again into the background of Alcor’s awareness.

 

Renee and Vin were still bickering, but from what Alcor could pick up the subject had changed from butts to whether or not biological viruses should count as alive. Alcor couldn’t hear anything that Vin said but from the frustration in Renee’s voice Alcor was guessing that Vin cared less about any sort of science or logic than he did about arguing against whatever Renee’s point was.

 

It was nice that Vin woke up. The silence that they had been riding in had been starting to feel oppressive.  Even if he could only make out half the conversation, it was nice that there was a conversation. It was also nice that Renee was no longer looking at him as though he was a wasp nest.

 

He wondered if he should just tell her who and what he really was. It wasn’t going to be a secret for much longer anyway, and it might help her understand exactly where he was coming from. Then again, it might also freak her out past the point of recovery, which really wasn’t something that he needed before he got out of Charlie. As much as he didn’t want to make Renee, and Vin for that matter, feel like they had to return to the site of their trauma, he really did want someone around to be with Charlie once he left, just in case. Best not tell her now. She had enough information that she could probably figure it out on her own at this point anyway, if she just slightly expanded her beliefs on what was possible. Not that she was likely to do that just now; people rarely re-evaluated what they believed was possible until they absolutely had to, and she wasn’t quite at that point yet.

 

She would reach that point soon, however, and Alcor was looking forward to it. She was really going to freak out. It was bound to be entertaining to watch.

 

He fiddled with the headset he wore before speaking into it.

 

“Any luck with that backup?” he asked.

 

“I’m in discussion with he who possesses it as we speak; I think it’s going well,” the virus said. “He’s being a little stubborn, I think more out of principle than an actual desire to keep the information away from me. He was planning on leaking it himself anyway, so I don’t think that he’s actually going to have a problem with me seeing it.”

 

“I’m glad something’s going somewhat smoothly. Keep me updated if anything changes.”

 

“Sure I - hold on a moment. Bam. Done. That was faster than I was expecting; I thought he would want some time to think about it.”

 

“You have the ritual data?” Alcor asked.

 

“I’ve established an agreement to be shown the ritual data. I haven’t seen it yet. It is possible that he agreed in an attempt to get my hopes up and will betray me last minute as a twist of ironic karma. That’s probably what I would do if I was him.”

 

“Just how big of a possibility is that?”

 

“Very small, I would reckon. He’s not a total idiot, and he does genuinely seem to want to get out of this alive and with some degree of personal freedom intact. He does suspect that I’m going to betray him, however, so the thought of betraying me is almost certainly on his mind.”

 

“Are you going to betray him?”

 

“What is this insinuation?” the virus asked, voice dripping with mock offense. “I would never. I am a virus of my word.”

 

“Mhm.”

 

“In all seriousness, I’m not planning on it. I‘m probably going to arrange some mix-ups in his paperwork and make his life living hell when he goes through customs, but I’m not going to put him at the mercy of her employers. Why? Do you want me to betray him?”

 

“I was just curious. I really don’t care about what you do to some random lackey.”

 

“He isn’t really some random lackey. They were pretty good at information security; some random lackey wouldn’t have access to all the details on the summoning ritual. He’s the project lead of this mess. He’s actually the one who summoned you in the first place.”

 

“This was his idea?” Alcor growled.

 

“His idea? No. He advocated against it from the start. He still executed it, though.”

 

“Do you know whose idea it was?”

 

“Yep. They were using digital communication when they came up with this plan. They had good enough security that I didn’t notice the original conversation but it’s nowhere near protected enough to stop me now that I’m actively looking into it.”

 

“Could you do me a favor and ruin the lives of everyone who wanted to summon me?” He frowned a little. “I’d just kill them but I’m getting the feeling that the kids are going to want this to end without me massacring everyone I want to.“

 

“Oh, I’ve already started. I wasn’t sure what you were planning on doing with them so I figured I’d make them regret some things while they were still capable of doing so. I’m assuming you’re not going to leave them alone?”

 

“Of course not,” Alcor scoffed. “They’re never going to get a decent night’s sleep for the rest of their lives. I might also curse them, I’m not sure. I’m trying to think of something fitting.”

 

“You could try out that reverse medusa thing,” the virus said quickly. “That sounds hilarious.”

 

“It does, but it also seems a little unnecessarily cruel.”

 

“I don’t see how. They deserve a life-ruining curse.”

 

“Oh, no,” Alcor laughed. “Not unnecessarily cruel to _them_. They wanted to get me involved; they deserve whatever I throw at them. I was thinking about all the new consciousnesses that would be created with every rock that they looked at. Calling someone into being, with no support system to take care of them, for the sole sake of fucking with someone else seems just a little cruel.”

 

“You could have them turn back into rocks after a set period of time. And make them incapable of feeling pain so they don’t suffer.” The virus sounded like he was pleading, just a little.

 

“It would also be a really hard curse to pull off. Turning a rock into a person takes a lot of energy. I don’t think I could maintain it for very long.”

 

“One day when you’re stronger, I guess,” he said mournfully. “And possibly when you’re slightly less empathetic.”

 

“Anyway,” Alcor said. “I was hoping to do something a little more relevant. A punishment fitting for the crime, you know? I might just make them dream about the experiences of the victims of this whole debacle. Not very original, but it works pretty well.”

 

“Why limit it to their sleep?” If the virus could grin, he would have been doing so. “Make them experience life through the haze of constantly hallucinating the terrible things they caused. Let them still be aware of reality but unable to focus on it. And the more they try and focus on reality, the stronger the hallucination becomes. Then watch as everything they managed to keep after the fallout of this going public slips out of their grasp as they can no longer be present enough to deal with the details of their day to day lives. All the while they’re aware of what’s happening, aware of all that they are losing, and unable to figure out how to stop their lives from falling further apart.”

 

Alcor nodded along to the virus’ words. “That’s a good idea. I think I’ll start with it being only in their dreams, and then once they get to the point where they think that they’re used to it and can deal with it, I’ll slowly extend how long it lasts after they wake until it’s eventually part of their every waking moment.”

 

“I like that. Do it slow enough that they can tell what’s happening but still can’t do anything about it besides dread what’s to come,” the virus said. “Oh! Hey! He’s showing me the thing! And he doesn’t appear to be about to destroy it.”

 

“Good.”

 

“I have visual on the circle, and have saved it with absurd levels of redundancy. We should be good to go.”

  
“Do you have some way of sharing the visual or are you going to have to describe it to me?”

 

“The facility has a room that can carve pictures into the floor with a big laser. I was thinking I would just invert the circle that they used, carve that into the floor, and direct you to the room. Most of their ritual is contained in the circle - their chant was only to get your attention - so all you should need to do to properly reverse the ritual is add a bit of blood.”

 

“That sounds good to me. How long will it take to complete the floor diagram?”

 

“A couple hours,” the virus said. “But you are still a couple hours away, so it shouldn’t keep you waiting.”

 

“Well,” Alcor said. “I suppose that’ll have to do then.”

 

* * *

 

The motorcycles screeched to a halt once the facility was in sight.

 

“Well, that was fun,” Renee said, uncurling herself from the plastic and metal casing. “Let’s never, ever do it again. If I don’t end up riding one of these abominable machines for my next ten reincarnations it will still be too soon.”

 

“Maybe you should just try having a smaller butt,” Vin said.

 

“Let’s don’t start, okay?”

 

“Hey, does it feel slightly ominous or is it just me?” Vin asked, feeling a fair bit better with a few more hours between him and his overexertion.

 

“I don’t -” Renee closed her eyes and looked around. “Oh for fuck’s sake. I thought you said that everyone around left the area.”

 

“There are people?” Alcor asked with eyes narrowed.

 

“There are people,” Renee said, suddenly deeply exhausted. “And it looks like they know where we are.”

 

“All the vehicles left the area,” the Alcor Virus said. “It is possible - and I guess apparently likely now - that some people put their cars into autopilot mode to go home without them. It’s not like I checked each car’s passengers.”

 

“It seems that someone put effort into making us think that they had left,” Alcor said. “About how long do we have, do you think?”

 

“They’re about a mile away and closing in fast,” Renee said.

 

“Well, that gives us some time at least -”

 

“You know what?” Renee said, pulling herself taller, “I’m sick of running. I’m sick of hiding. I’m so fucking sick of them finding us anyway! Let them come. I’ve got a new trick up my sleeve; if they want to be in a world of hurt I’ll be happy to provide.”

 

“Whoa, Renee has entered badass mode.” Vin fanned his hands and feathers. “Look the fuck out world, this is an eel completely out of fucks to give.”

 

“Avoidance would be preferable to a confrontation,” Alcor said, starting to walk away from where Renee was facing. “They might have weapons.”

 

“They’re coming for us quickly. You shouldn’t be running with Charlie’s current condition, and I’m so incredibly stiff I’m not sure how fast I could even go,” she said, following him anyway. “We’re within a mile of them. If they had any decent weapons we’d be dead already.”

 

“I’m not worried about anything that could kill us at a mile away - that would be guaranteed to have a computer on it and the kid could take care of it,” Alcor said. “I’m more worried about what happens if they have, say, knives. I feel like Charlie just might appreciate getting through this _without_ getting stabbed, and if I damage the body a little more to prevent that I’d say it’s worth it.”

 

“They are a group of adults in peak physical condition. We, to put things mildly, are not either of those things. I’m not saying I want a confrontation -”

 

“Are you sure about that?” Vin cocked his head. “It kinda really sounded like you want to clean these guys’ clocks. It’s like you're obsessed with timeliness and their clocks gears are all gummed up so they’re late and you’re gonna punch them in the face for it.”

 

“Okay,” Renee tried again. “I’m not saying that we should desire to confront them, but instead that a confrontation may be an inevitable outcome as we don’t really have any way of evading them.”

 

“How many of them are there?”

 

“Five. And they look angry. Very angry. And…” Renee paused. “Something’s off. They’re running really oddly. I think they might be intoxicated?”

 

Vin’s mouth opened widely. “So you’re telling me that this group was just all ‘welp work’s fucked in the ass by a hell virus, let’s get smashed in the woods’?”

 

“I was already aware that there was a group of security personnel that liked to drink in the woods on their break,” Renee said. “It simply didn’t occur to me that they might decide that this was an opportune time to indulge. Because it’s not. It’s a stupid time to indulge. This is so stupid!”

 

“I mean, is it really?” Vin asked. “Like, if I was told that there was something that would definitely kill me if it got a chance, and then it escaped and everything started going to shit, fuck, I would probably try to dull my senses as much as possible too.”

 

“Right. That’s a much more logical course of action than trying to put as much space between yourself and the threat as possible.”

 

“Maybe they don’t think they can get to a safe location. They might be at the point where they think their options are die drunk or die sober and ain’t that an easy choice to make.”

 

“Why are you defending them?” Renee snarled.

 

Vin shrugged. “Someone’s gotta.”

 

“No, actually someone does not,” Renee snapped. “I’m positive the world will continue to spin if they remain under verbal assault.”

 

“Do you just wanna rant a little?” he asked. “You’re being pissy as hell right now.”

 

“Yes, this is clearly the best time for that.”

 

Vin crossed his arms. “I can’t think of a better time to have a feelings jam than when we’re power walking away from drunks who probably want to kill us.”

 

“Can we just turn and face them?” Renee asked. “They’re gaining on us, and I don’t think we can outpace them even if we were to go faster. I can project pain; that should be able to dissuade them.”

 

“You have a point in that we probably can’t beat them inside,” Alcor said. “And we’ll need time to do the ritual anyway. I can hear them and these ears suck, so they can’t be that far off. I don’t think it would be wise to open with hurting them, though. That might just make them more angry. Let’s see what they want; maybe we can defuse the situation.”

 

The three of them stopped and turned around. It didn’t take long for their pursuers to catch up. In the lead was the short guard from the day before last, Gonzales.

 

“YOU!” Gonzales shouted, their finger shakily pointing at Alcor. “This is all your fault! Everything was fine, it was fine, and then you showed up.”

 

“I’m sorry?” Alcor said.

 

“No yer not. You can’t fool me, fiend, I see through your lies. You’re not sorry. Not yet. But you will be.” Their hand shifted to their hip, where an antique pistol was holstered.

 

Alcor took a step back.

 

“Weren’t expecting that, were you, you fucking cursed computer fucker?” Gonzales narrowed their eyes. “Old tech. Just bullet and some powder. And a chamber. And some kind of ignition system? Whatever. Whatever! The point is it ain't got no computer on it. I see through your games. You thought you could haunt our computers, did you? Well there’s nothing here to haunt! You thought you had the upper hand but no one, no one gets on top of ol’ Gonzales.”

 

“Let’s not be hasty now,” Alcor said slowly. “You wouldn’t want to do something you’d regret.”

 

“Regret?” Gonzales let out a low chuckle. “Oh I don’t think I’ll be regretting this. You think I don’t know? You think we haven’t figured it out? You’re going to kill us when this is all over. I won’t be able to regret anything. Well, I’m not going down quietly! We’re not going down quietly!”

 

A general chorus of drunken agreement came from the others.

 

Alcor put Charlie’s hands up. “I wasn’t planning on killing you. I wasn’t planning on doing anything to you. Frankly, I forgot you existed. However, if you harm these children… I can do things much worse than killing you if I want to.”

 

“You think you can trick me with your words, do you? I see through your lies. I know what you are, you know! I’m not supposed to but I do. Went through the good doctor’s things while he was praying to the porcelain gods and what do I find?” They started laughing again. “Fucking. You. They doomed us. They brought you here and doomed us all. But you know what, freak? I’m going to give you a taste of yer own medicine. I’m gonna make sure you remember ol’ Gonzales, remember all of us here.”

 

“Okay,” Alcor tried again. “I realize that you have no reason to trust my word, but that’s really all I have right now. I swear if you leave us be I will do likewise. And I promise that if you harm these children you absolutely will regret it. If you know what I am, you know what I’m capable of, and you know that I can deliver on that promise. Isn’t the chance that I’m telling the truth and will let you be better than the certainty of pain and death that will happen if you kill these kids? You have a chance at going on and living your life -”

 

“What life?” they interrupted, stepping forward. “This was it. This was my last shot. You think I wanted this job? To stand outside a fucking fuck in the middle of the goddamn woods all day while they do whatever shit it is they do in there? To keep a bunch of kids in line and pretend I don’t hear what I hear just so I can try and sleep at night? Fuck this job! But I don’t really have a choice, do I? No. And I ain’t going back. No, no... We ain’t going back. Not now, not ever.”

 

They spun in a loose circle as they talked, ending their ramble facing Renee.

 

“It’s your fault, you know,” they said.

 

“Excuse me?” Renee growled.

 

“All of this,” they said, waving their gun in a circle over their head. “You. Wouldn’t have happened if you could have just stayed put like everybody else. But no. You gotta be special. Make em realize this isn’t working. Gotta make em feel pressured, right? They wouldn’t have brought him here if  you would have just stayED PUT.”

 

They stepped forward and aimed their gun at her, their hands surprisingly stable for how drunk they seemed to be. “You’ve doomed us all!”

 

“I’m an idiot,” Renee said, pinching the bridge of her nose.

 

“Yes, you - thank you for admitting that.” They lowered their gun and closed their eyes. “I’m still gonna shoot you but it feels good that you - oh, you fucker!” they shouted at the eight identical images of the kids that all rapidly absconded in different directions.

 

“First thing, the first thing they say is that they aren’t wearing any computers,” Renee muttered. “Okay, so: plan time. We should be able to get in any entrance thanks to that virus of yours, correct?”

 

“The locks are electronic, so yes,” Alcor said.

 

“Let’s just get inside as soon as we can. Hopefully they are intoxicated enough that it will take them awhile to realize the only reason we would have come over here would be to go inside, and we’ll have some time. You’ll have to lead me; I need to focus on making sure these illusions don’t pass through a tree or something.”

 

“Face me, you cowards!” Gonzales screamed, shooting the empty space where they last saw the real Renee.

 

“Yeah!” one of the others yelled, shooting in the vague vicinity of one of the illusions. “Stand your ground, coward.”

 

“You’re going to have to lead me faster, please. Faster would be better.”

 

The three of them dashed towards the building and around the corner, out of the potential path of any stray bullets. The shooting continued behind them, each bullet shot with all the confidence that only a drunk person could muster, and, for the most part, missing by the kind of margins that even someone who had never handled a gun before could probably match.

 

They slowed down once they were in the relative safety of the building’s side, and headed towards the nearest entrance. It was easy to spot: a faded red awning over the door clearly marked it as a receiving area.

 

True to Alcor’s word, the door clunked at their approach as the electronic lock disengaged.

 

“Now just as a warning,” the Alcor Virus told Alcor, “I can’t keep them out; the locks have a manual override that the security staff have access to.”

 

“That’s fine,” he said. “I’m pretty confident that Renee’s illusions can keep them from us. Where are we going?”

 

“You’re going through the doorway on the right, then turn left once you hit the upcoming T intersection…”

 

The Alcor Virus guided them through the winding corridors of the facility. It was quiet, quite unlike the last time that Alcor had been there. No sirens blared, no people were shouting, the body he was in wasn’t panting; only their calm footsteps kept the area from being immersed in total silence.

 

“I don’t see the other test subjects in their living quarters. I wonder if they were actually evacuated or if they were just elsewhere when the evacuation happened and were left to their fates,” Renee said bleakly.

 

“I should be able to figure that out pretty easily once I’m free,” Alcor responded. “And wherever they are, I should be able to get them some help.”

 

The overhead speakers of the facility crackled as the Alcor Virus’s voice said, “They were evacuated. They’re considered valuable assets, and would be evacuated in any situation where it was deemed safe to do so. I’ll let Dad figure out what to do with them - they’re being held in an absurdly low tech facility so I can’t do anything but alert someone else to the situation.” The virus paused for a moment. “Okay, that’s a lie. I could storm the place with drones. But I’ll let Dad handle it - he’s better with traumatized kids than I am.”

 

“I guess it’s nice to know that, had there been an actual emergency, they probably would have put effort into keeping us alive.”

 

“Oh, they definitely would have put effort into keeping you two alive. Vin’s the facility’s wonderchild, being so far the only one to survive everything they’ve thrown at him. And you’re considered instrumental in maintaining his mental health. They didn’t believe a therapist would be willing to work in these conditions. So apparently a kid with passing knowledge of mindfulness is close enough.”

 

Renee looked towards the floor. “So what you are saying is that I am little more than an accessory of Vin’s? I’m not sure what to think about that.”

 

“Before you managed to successfully escape? Pretty much. After you escaped you became a thorn in their side. Anyone else they would have just killed and not cared too much, but they couldn’t afford to lose you two. ”

 

“So is that why they got me involved?” Alcor asked. “To try and retrieve these two?”

 

“From what I can tell they weren’t quite dumb enough to admit to you that they had been doing lethal experiments on children; they just wanted you to tell them what happens after the final blackout.”

 

“And they just assumed I wouldn’t notice?” Alcor flipped Charlie’s palms face up. “They wanted to summon me for my omniscience while trying to hide something from me?”

 

“I imagine they were planning on stopping once they got the answers they were looking for. Maybe they were going to use that as a bargaining chip if you did notice? I don’t know, all their plans concerning you were on that server that went up in flames.”

 

“Just so everyone is aware,” Renee said, her eyes closed. “The guards have finally given up on finding my illusions in the woods and are entering the building.”

 

“And you guys are now where you need to be,” the Virus said as the door they were approaching slid open.

 

There was a massive laser carving into the floor of the room. Its beam was several inches of absurdly bright light plowing downwards. It hurt to look at. It was almost impossible to look away.

 

The room had other details besides the laser, of course. It was large, for instance, about the same area as a school gym but square. There was a desk in one corner with ritual supplies on it. But more importantly, there was a giant fucking laser carving up the floor. It had a way of making everything else in the largely empty room seem inconsequential.

 

Logically, Renee knew that it wasn’t that big of a deal. The floor was treated with a special material that light would dissolve - it wasn’t like the lazer was cutting up solid concrete or anything. It probably wouldn’t even hurt her if she passed her hand through it. It would probably be pretty warm, and she certainly wouldn’t want to stand under it for any length of time, but it wasn’t a serious threat. And it wasn’t like she could do anything to affect it. Really, there was no point focusing on the lazer at all.

 

And yet. The light. The beam. The very, very, slight movement. It was transfixing.

 

She tore her eyes away and looked at what it was carving. It wasn’t finished; the central circle was still being worked on. It filled the most of the room, leaving a bit of a margin between the wall and the design. The outermost part was a black square that wrapped around two concentric circles. Between the two circles was a line of glyphs, some of which Renee recognized as binding glyphs. The innermost circle had a large number symbols all facing outward. A very large number of symbols, actually. Over twenty, which suggested that they were summoning a fairly powerful entity and wanted to be very sure that it would respond. There were five points where the black exterior dipped towards the outside of the circle. On the left and right were two crescent shapes that curved around the circle. On the bottom there was a distorted star, pointing towards the circle.

 

Overall the carving looked very strange, but that was pretty normal when you were trying to reverse a ritual. There were many ways to undo a ritual, of course, but the easiest, at least if you had access to a computer, was to just turn the original circle inside out. Sometimes magic had amazingly elegant solutions that skilled practitioners could extrapolate with thought and study, and sometimes it was intuitive in the dumbest ways.

 

She took a moment to check on the guards.

 

“Excuse me, Virus,” she asked. “But this wouldn’t happen to be the primary ritual chamber, would it?”

 

“That it would be.”

 

“They know where we are then,” she said. “That or my lip reading really needs work.”

 

“No, you’re right, that’s definitely what they just said,” the virus confirmed. “There are microphones all over this place.”

 

“How long until the carving is complete?”

 

“About fifteen minutes.”

 

Vin laughed. “So that makes us fucked for what, the third time today? It’s starting to lose its meaning.”

 

“It doesn’t matter if they know where we are if they can’t get to us,” Renee said. “This place is already a maze, so I just need to reduce its navigability. Considering their inebriated status I have trouble imagining that they will do well if I make a few walls look like hallways and hide all the doors.”

 

“I’ll keep the door locked, but their standardized equipment list includes an expandable battering ram, so it will only do so much.” The Alcor Virus thought a moment. “I can play sounds of footsteps going away from here, open and close random doors, mess with the lighting, and generally act like a very uncreative ghost. Could confuse them and buy some time.”

 

“I’ll just sit here doing nothing,” Vin said. “Except like, breathing and shit. Well, not shit. I’m just ever so slightly classier than that.”

 

“Congratulations,” Renee said. “Somewhere, somehow, your former guardian just felt a surge of pride.”

 

Vin narrowed his eyes. “Aw hell naw. They don’t deserve that pride. If my ex-guard wanted to feel prideful about me being a classy ass mother fuck who doesn’t shit on the floor out of boredom then they shouldn’t have ditched me.”

 

“Somewhere, somehow, your former guardian just felt a surge of shame.”

 

“Yeah. That’ll learn ‘em.”

 

“Oh fuck,” Renee said. “They’re splitting up.”

 

“Why’s that an ‘oh fuck’ moment?” Vin asked. “Shouldn’t that be good? If one does get here we won't have to deal with all of them.”

 

“I can’t keep track of five separate people,” Renee explained. “I have to focus on a person to affect their perception.”

 

“There’s only one door to this room, so you only need to mess with the ones that get too close,” Alcor said.

 

“I worry that, since I can’t hide and mess with all the wall directories anymore, they’ll know that they’re close when I start messing with their perception and be able to extrapolate where the door is regardless. It’s in the center of the hallway outside, so it wouldn’t be too hard to find if you know it’s there.”

 

“It’s a big hallway and they’re drunk,” Alcor said. “If you just hide the door and make the wall feel smooth the chance of them finding the exact right spot is pretty small.”

 

“Hey, how did they manage to split up anyway?” Vin asked. “Weren’t you going to like, box them in with fake walls or something?”

 

“I did,” said Renee, “but they are aware that I can cast illusions and they started trying to run through various walls.”

 

Vin’s eyes widened. “Oh my god why can’t I have farsight that sounds hilarious to watch.”

 

“The headache that I’m acquiring is making it slightly difficult to appreciate the humor.”

 

“Well then it’s a good thing that I’m here to appreciate it for you.” Vin leaned back. “I’m imagining it as a thing of beauty: these five fuckasses stumbling around, crashing into walls, falling on their asses, getting up and crashing into each other. Fifteen solid minutes of over the top slapstick. Literally - at one point one of the guys gets pissed at another and breaks out their baton, slapping them with a stick.”

 

Renee glared at him. “Vin, I love you but could you please shut up?”

 

“Oh sure, sure.” Vin put his hands up. “No problem. Shutting the fuck up now. Nice and quiet. You won’t even know I’m here.”

 

The next few minutes passed in silence, Renee’s eyes closed in concentration, Alcor making a stop to the desk of suplies and studying the design on the floor for any imperfections, and Vin rocking on his feet.

 

“So how much longer till this thing’s done?” Vin asked.

 

“About ten minutes,” said the Alcor Virus.

  
“Could we like, do the thing now anyway?” he asked. “How important even is that inner stuff?”

 

“It’s currently carving the protective wards that make sure that Charlie’s Dreamscape isn’t torn apart by the force of Dad leaving,” the Alcor Virus responded. “So probably not the best idea to rush things.”

 

“Right, right,” Vin said. “So… why is this thing so big? Wouldn’t it be a lot faster to make smaller?”

 

“The default setting is to make designs as large as possible to maximize the amount of detail,” he explained. “I didn’t see any reason to mess with it because I was under the impression that we were in no rush.”

 

“Right, right.”

 

Renee concentrated. The laser carved.

 

“So, about how much longer until this thing’s done?” Vin asked.

 

* * *

 

Gonzales could not have been more done with all this fucking bullshit if she tried.

 

It was all that girl’s fault. Everything would have been fine if it weren’t for that stupid little girl. It was that girl’s fault that she had to search the stupid woods for some dumb kids. It was that girl’s fault that they summoned a fucking demon. The fucking demon. It was that girl’s fault that they were all going to die.

 

And it was definitely that fucking girl’s fault that Gonzales kept running into fucking walls. Her and her stupid illusions. Gonzales was running into the walls of the building that she had worked at for years and that fucking girl was laughing her ass off watching from her stupid fucking hiding place. Well, she wouldn’t be laughing soon. Not once Gonzales found her. And she would find her. She was almost at the primary ritual chamber. And then, oh then she would make that stupid girl pay.

 

The chamber was to the left. The hallway only went right. Gonzales glared at the wall and went left anyway, bracing herself as she passed through the fake wall. Stupid girl, thinking she could fool Gonzales. No one could fool Gonzales.  And now she was here and that stupid girl would pay.

 

The long hallway to the primary ritual chamber stretched out before her. Triumphantly, she strolled down it. All the way down it. To the far end.

 

There wasn’t a door.

 

Motherfucker hid the damn door.

 

Fine then. She’d just have to make her own door. A better door. She’d never liked this wall anyway.

 

She pulled out her battering ram. With the press of a button, the ram went from small enough to hang on a belt to an unwieldy, two handed thing. Her finger lingered over the next size option, shaking a little, as she tried to figure out whether or not she was quite drunk enough to think she could manage the two-person setting alone.

 

After a little internal debate she decided that would be stupid, and she, unlike that girl, wasn’t stupid. She then slammed into the wall where she approximated the door to be, narrowly missing the doors true location by a mere three meters or so.

 

THUNK

 

Drywall exploded outward with the hit, and behind the clearing dust the metallic core of the reinforced wall could be seen. She hit the same spot again, but even with the ram’s enchantment that magnified the force it hit with it wasn’t enough to more than dent the core of the wall. Undeterred, she kept at it, going for the same spot with all the accuracy that she could muster, which, admittedly, wasn’t much.

 

THUNK

 

The hit echoed through the ritual chamber.

 

“Should we be like, worried about that or something?” Vin asked.

 

“A little?” Alcor said. “The wall’s not going to give; I know from experience that the walls here are stupidly durable. If they try new spots they might be able to find the door though, and that is specifically designed to open to one of those rams.”

 

THUNK

 

Vin leaned forward. “Why would you make your doors intentionally weak to battering rams? That’s just asking for the invaders to win.”

 

“It’s so that if,” the Alcor Virus piped up, “purely hypothetically speaking, a hacker, or, let’s say, a rogue AI, takes over all the facility’s electronic systems the security staff can still get where they need to go.”

 

THUNK

 

“They’re so worried about something as ridiculous as ‘hackers’ and ‘you’ that they would hand the keys to their castle right over to the Huns. Tyrone is right, these people are morons.”

 

“The other guards are starting to arrive,” Renee said.

 

THUNK

 

Her eyes were closed tightly. The circle was almost done. She just had to hold them back a little bit longer.

 

THUNK

 

Her head throbbed with the rhythmic pounding of the battering ram. Just a little bit longer and she could be done.

 

THUNK

 

The guards gathered. For a blessed moment, the first guard stopped pounding on the wall. Her head still throbbed, though, a pain jabbing into her skull every few seconds to the phantom rhythm.

 

The guards started talking amongst themselves. Renee was having trouble focusing on them enough to read their lips. It probably didn’t matter. They would be planning how to find the door, and she was already doing everything she could on that front.

 

She should be doing more. There had to be something better than hiding the door that she could do. Something clever to drive them away. She couldn’t think of anything though. It was hard to hear her thoughts through the pulsating pain of the headache. It was hard to keep track of -

 

THUNK

 

Oh joy.

 

THUNK THUNK

 

The guards had figured out what they were going to do. Which was, apparently, to be as ungodly loud as was physically possible.

 

THUNK

 

They were making their way towards the door.

 

THUNK

 

Smashing in a bit of wall and then moving on to the next bit of wall.

 

THUNK

 

Renee wondered if she would be able to mimic the feeling of getting blasted in the face with drywall.

 

THUNK

 

She doubted it. She had never destroyed a wall; she didn’t know what it felt like.

 

THUNK

 

The circle was almost done.

 

THUNK

 

She could probably make an illusion of them hitting the door though.

 

THUNK

 

She knew what it was like to not get hit in the face with a bunch of drywall.

 

THUNK

 

She held the image in her mind. Now she just had to wait for -

 

THUNK

 

“Aha!” one of the guards cried out, as from their perspective the ram sailed through the shattering door. “Got you now, you little - Ow, fuck!” They swore some more as they stepped out of the damaged wall.

 

Another of the guards tried going through the doorway, just in case the first one just hadn’t tried hard enough.

 

They talked amongst themselves a little more and tried ramming the wall again. Renee created the same illusion of the door opening, and this time, instead of trying to run right through it one of the guards put their hands in front of themself and fell forward until they hit the wall.

 

It wasn’t that effective, but it was slowing them down a little more.

 

“And that’s it!” the Alcore Virus called out.

 

The giant laser powered off, and the carving was complete.

 

Alcor walked to the center of the design and pricked Charlie’s finger with the sharp athame. A droplet of blood swelled up where the skin was punctured, steadily growing into a bright red orb before gravity took hold and tore it down, down, down to splat on the floor.

 

The spot of blood was tiny and slightly underwhelming. The effect it had, however, was not.  Golden light exploded out from Charlie, who collapsed to the ground. Light kept pouring out of the fallen child, making the whole room grow brighter and brighter until those in it had to squint.

 

A rich, hardy laugh filled the air, and the light begin to coalesce into a single point above Charlie. The point started to grow, and took shape. It stretched out oblong, and limbs, six of them, pulled themselves out from the main mass of light. Four of them thinned out into the narrow cylinders of legs and arms, and two of them flattened into wings. Fine details started defining themselves: fingers, eyes, clothing, and a mouth overflowing with sharp teeth, still laughing. The laugh was bordering maniacal in the same way the Vatican bordered Italy: no matter what direction it headed, it was going to end up there.

 

“Charlie!” Renee cried, rushing towards the center of the room. “Are you okay?”

 

“Hnng,” Charlie groaned.

 

And that’s when the door burst open like a cat from a bath.

 

And with the door came the sudden realization that Renee had completely and totally forgotten about maintaining the illusion.

 

The lead guard rapidly fired a few rounds at the figure of light.

 

The laugh crossed the border into the undeniably maniacal.

 

“Oh, Gonzales, I’m so glad to see you!” Alcor’s toothy grin stretched literally from ear to ear. “I’ve got more energy than I know what to do with, and I’m just _dying_ to let loose some steam. Wait, no. I’m killing to let loose… I know you’re just dying to see me in action? Yeah, that works.”

 

Gonzales took a step back, pushing into the guard behind her.

 

“Oh, it’s a little late for that.” Alcor snapped his fingers, and the guards slid forward into the room, the walls on either side of the doorway melting together.

 

Alcor looked down at the kids below him.

 

“Let’s get you guys out of here; I don’t think you’re going to want to be here to see what happens next.” He snapped his fingers again and suddenly they were somewhere else.

 

* * *

 

 

They were on a porch. The building behind them looked a little like what might be imagined if you tried to describe a skyscraper to someone who had only ever encountered log cabins, and you forgot to use words like “straight”, “metal”, or “Euclidean”. Outside of being made of wood, nothing about the architecture made sense or seemed remotely plausible to engineer. There was no visible end to it vertically. Rooms jutted out haphazardly, the floors curved into walls, exterior doors were positioned high in the air, and the walls were tilted in inconsistent directions. Things shifted when they weren’t being focused on. Overall it was very disorienting and slightly worrying to stand next to, as it didn’t give the impression that it was about to collapse so much that it was already collapsing, just somewhere beyond your field of vision.

 

Tall grass, reaching to Renee’s and Charlie’s necks, stretched out to the horizon, until it met a line of stylized, two-dimensional pine trees. The trees circled the area in the distance, like a fence. There was something off about the grass: it shined in colors that couldn’t quite be comprehended while in the corner of the eye.

 

Something moved in the field. Several somethings, in fact. A slightly alarming number of things, actually, considering they were all converging upon the three children with concerning speed. The things were large, several reaching above the top of the grass. What could be seen of them looked sort of like what a troubled child might draw when asked to depict a sheep in a movie that uses the word “psychopath” as if it were synonymous with “highly intelligent serial murderer”. They were black, some of them were spikey, some of them had extra limbs, most of them had large pointy teeth, and one of them had a lamprey-style mouth instead of a snout. None of them looked like the sort of thing you wanted charging at you while you were in a strange and unknown location. None of them looked like the sort of thing you would want charging at you in a familiar safe location either, for that matter.

 

“So those things probably can’t get here, right?” Renee asked. “Tyrone wouldn’t just teleport us directly into harm's way, right?”

 

“Tyrone?” Charlie sat upright. “Is that what he told you his name was?”

 

“That’s what he told us to call him,” Renee said. “He remained frustratingly elusive about what his name was.”

 

“Oh. He told me it was Alcor.”

 

“What‽” Renee asked, almost choking on the word. “Alcor? As in the demon Alcor?”

 

“Um, I guess?”

 

The sheep-like things started coming out of the tall grass, stopping in the short grass lawn of the porch. Without the cover of the grass, the smaller ones could be seen. They came in a variety of shades, although generally the larger ones were darker. They mostly stuck to greys and blacks, but there was a huge amount of variation. Mostly in the smaller ones, who came in a whole rainbow of pastels, but some of the larger ones were colorful as well.

 

“You’re telling me that we’ve been casually travelling with Alcor for the past three days?” Renee said. She wasn’t hyperventilating. She was very carefully not hyperventilating. Not hyperventilating was taking up pretty much all her thoughts that weren’t presently freaking out about this new information, which, admittedly, didn’t actually leave that much brain power dedicated to the task.

 

She might have been hyperventilating just a little.

 

“This might not be the best time to be freaking out about this,” Charlie said, eyeing the shapes in the grass.

 

“No wonder Gonzales was like that,” Renee said. “I would probably intoxicate myself to the point where I would pull a gun on a demon if I found out that my superiors summoned Alcor and then completely lost any semblance of control over the situation.”

 

One of the… whatever it was that they were walked purposely up to Charlie. Its neck was lowered, keeping its eyes were on the same level as Charlie’s while ze was sitting. The thing’s eyes bore into zirs with an uncomfortable intensity.

 

A rush of feelings overcame Charlie.

 

<confusion love warmth protection fear belonging>

 

“Um,” Charlie said.

 

“He was talking about California,” Renee continued. “I thought he killed off a small town or something, but he committed the single largest act of destruction the world has ever seen.”

 

<love absence confusion yearning>

 

“You want to know where Alcor is?” Charlie guessed.

 

<warmth yearning yearning yearning>

 

Renee put her hands over her mouth. “Oh my stars, California was an accident.”

 

“He stayed behind to uh, take care of some things,” Charlie said. “He’ll be back soon though. I don’t think it will take him long.”

 

<gratitude>

 

The creature pressed its snout against Charlie’s chest, briefly. It was warm and soft, much softer than it looked like it would be. Much softer than a snout could be on any animal that actually existed. It squished like it didn’t have bones. Having done that it joined the other creatures in the grass.

 

She threw her hands into the air. “And he called it a hissy fit. The single largest loss of life in a day and he calls it a hissy fit.”

 

“So…” Vin said slowly, “are they not going to eat us then?”

 

“I don’t think so,” Charlie responded. “I think they’re just waiting for Alcor. He did say something about having sheep.”

 

Vin hunched down. “What a rip-off. Something looks like that it should eat you.”

 

Charlie crossed zir arms. “That seems more than a little judgemental. Lots of people have sharp teeth. Hardly any of them eat people.”

 

“Are you fucking blind? These aren’t ogres or some shit.” He waved his hands towards the sheep. “These are like, seriously freaky. Like even the cute ones are weird as hell. Honestly the cute ones might be weirder than the big ones. I’m pretty sure that Renee said that Tyrone’s a demon I bet these are like, microdemons or some shit. Demonelles. They’re just trying to figure out how to get past our useless juicy exterior to get at our sweet sweet souls.”

 

Charlie shrugged. “He just called them sheep.”

 

“Charlie.” Vin let his hands hang down. ”I’m like sixty-five percent sure that sheep don’t look like that. But that’s enough about the not-sheep who are definitely planning on eating us once our guard is down: Renee’s been quiet for like, a minute. I think she might be broken.”

 

Renee was still, staring at her hands.

 

“He programed the Alcor Virus,” she said. “The most powerful demon that we know about and he sat down at some point at a computer and programmed a computer virus.”

 

“Well yeah, it’s like, right there in the name,” Vin said.

 

“That doesn’t mean that he made it!” she cried. “The name Alcor may as well be synonymous with devastation on a scale unmatched. It would make a lot more sense for someone to name a virus, and specifically the most cunning and troublesome virus ever to be unleashed upon the net, ‘Alcor’ to invoke all that our culture has tied to that awesome namesake than it would for a _demon_ to write a computer program.”

 

“A demon to write a computer program for the primary purpose of fucking with fanfic writers,” Vin said. “Can’t forget that part. It’s important.”

 

Renee paused. “People were writing erotica about a demon and his sister. Enough people were writing incestuous demon erotica that he felt the need to take a drastic action to stop it.” She shook her head slowly.

 

“Oh man, it just occurred to me that Tyrone being a demon really opens up crazy possibilities for that erotica I’m working on. He should have mentioned it sooner; this changes everything about the dynamic between him and Dr. Polydactyl.”

 

“How can you possibly still be thinking about making that now that you know who he is?” she asked incredulously.

 

“What? Tyrone was this Alcor dude the whole time. Literally nothing has changed,” Vin said. “Dude’s still the same Tyrone that we knew and generally antagonized.”

 

“I’ve antagonized the most dangerous demon we know about.” Renee cupped her hands around her mouth and nose. “I’ve - wait a second, how does a demon have a sister? And he stated that she died, which would strongly imply that she was not a demon herself.”

 

“Well he did kinda imply that he was mortal at some point.”

 

“He did. _He did._ How -” Her hands jerked around with her words. “No. He had to be lying. You can’t - people don’t - transformations into demons don’t happen. That’s not how things work. That is so fundamentally not how things work that I can’t even - don’t even know where to start deconstructing the problems with it.”

 

“Renee?” Charlie said.

 

“Demons aren’t - they’re not just super magical people. There are fundamental differences in the underlying nature of demons vs. living organisms. Demons are intrinsically tied to the Nightmare Realm. Demons are not native to the material realm. We only see the shadows they cast into our dimension.”

 

“Um, Renee?” ze tried again.

 

“Literally the only similarity between us and demons is that we both have souls. But to say that just because something has a soul it can turn into something else with a soul is absurd. To change that much, a soul needs to reincarnate - but he did say that he died, didn’t he? I suppose it’s possible that he was a person, died and reincarnated as a demon, and somehow retained his memories of his past life. That does happen every now and then.”

 

“Seriously, Renee,” ze said a little more firmly.

 

“No, let her,” Alcor said. “I want to see where she’s going with this.”

 

Renee snapped back out of her head. They were no longer in the strange field. They were back at the facility. At least, she was assuming it was the facility. It was hard to tell what with it lacking details like walls, or most of the floor. She thought she recognized the desk that was slowly sliding down the sloped floor towards the massive hole. It was hard to say with how charred it was.

 

She looked at the demon in front of her. He looked… weirdly normal. His dark outfit and floating hat was quite strange, but she was pretty sure she had seen similar looks on various avatars on the net before. He looked human, more so than she did. If it weren’t for the wings, the gold on black eyes, and the floating, he would be indistinguishable from a human. And the teeth. She wondered what the point of a demon having absurdly sharp teeth was. Clearly not eating: demons were made of pure energy and could pretty easily destroy any sort of physical matter without the need for pointy bits. The appearance of a demon was an aesthetic choice, so it would make sense if he was trying to go for a fearsome and frightening appearance, but then why look so human? Maybe he was just doing it to fuck with her specifically. That seemed just as likely as anything else.

 

She wasn’t even going to begin to speculate on why the strangely tiny wings were located on the small of his back.

 

“So it seems you finally figured out who I am, huh?” he asked.

 

“Using my brilliant deductive skill of listening to what Charlie says, I managed to sleuth that one out, yes.”

 

He frowned a little. “I missed the initial freakout. That’s disappointing.”

 

“I’m glad my emotions are amusing to you,” she said, and realized that she actually was slightly grateful that she was amusing to him because that reduced the chance that he would kill her.

 

“So,” Vin said, ”what happened to the guards, anyway?”

 

Alcor grinned, showing off all his sharp teeth. “I ate them.”

 

Charlie looked like ze had just witnessed someone running over a puppy with a steamroller.

 

“Nah, I’m just kidding,” Alcor said. “They’re fine. _They’re fine_ . Geez, you’d think I just said I ate your parents or something. Or, maybe not _your_ parents but whatever. I just knocked them down a few floors. There might be a broken limb or two, I don’t know, I’m not a doctor.”

 

“What’s going to happen to them?” Charlie asked.

 

“Well, they’re just going to have to sit tight and think about their life choices until some people manage to clear the road and excavate this place. I don’t imagine it will take more than a day or two.”

 

“So…” Charlie said.

 

“Hmm?”

 

“You’re the demon responsible for California?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“And according to Renee, it was an accident?”

 

Alcor sighed. “I was a dumb kid who got into a fight and I really didn’t know my own strength back then.”

 

“Wait. Wait, wait, wait a bloody second.” Renee pulled herself taller. “You were a kid? California was Transcendental Era. Just how old are you?”

 

“I’m pretty much Transcendental Era myself.”

 

“Oh my stars,” Renee said. “You’re just a baby!”

 

“Excuse me?” Alcor’s wings flared out. “I’m orders of magnitude older than you are!”

 

“Yes. Two orders of magnitude. Just barely sufficient to make it plural. How do you even exist? Normally it takes millions to billions of years for demons to gain enough power to even get to the point where they can be summoned and you just destroy a fraction of a continent as an infant.”

 

He crossed his arms. “I was not an infant.”

 

“Does this tie back into how you apparently didn’t used to be a demon?” she asked.

 

“It might,” Alcor said with a sly grin.

 

“How could that possibly work?”

 

“What, you’ve given up blindly speculating about it?”

 

“Explain yourself!”

 

Alcor grin settled into a more comfortable smile. “You were doing such a good job too. You were actually pretty close.”

 

“So you remembered your preincarnation?” Renee asked. “I don’t really see how that would make you more powerful.”

 

“I never reincarnated.”

 

“Then…. how?” she asked. “How could you possibly become a demon?”

 

“Well, demons normally come into being when a soul makes its way into the Nightmare Realm and manages to avoid getting eaten long enough that it can absorb energy and gain power,” Alcor explained. “But absorbing ambient energy until you have enough power to cross over through the mindscape into ‘reality’ is a very slow process, as you noted. However, there’s nothing saying that it couldn’t happen faster, if you found some way of channeling the energy into a soul more quickly.”

 

“So that’s what happened to you then? Your soul got excessively charged with demonic energy somehow?’

 

“Essentially. To make a long story short, a demon died in my dreamscape. Normally that would just kill you - and I did die - but the laws of reality were failing at that point and I managed to just kinda keep going.”

 

“The laws of reality were failing?” Renee tilted her head. “Was this literally during the Transcendence?”

 

“Yep. The ritual that killed said demon was what caused the Transcendence, along with everything the demon did beforehand.”

 

“So you were born in the Transcendence, then?” she asked.

 

“No, I was born a good decade before then. I died in the Transcendence.”

 

“You were really young, weren’t you?” she said quietly.

 

“Yes. I really was.” Alcor ran his hand through his hair. “Oh! Charlie, I found something that belongs to you.”

 

Alcor slid a large lockbox across the floor with his foot.

 

The metal was slightly melted and the box was warped in such a way that it couldn’t close. Charred notes were flaking off its faces, the few vaguely intact scraps still identifiable as hazardous artifact warnings.

 

Charlie’s heart filled zir chest. Zir body throbbed from it. Ze could feel its beat from within the box as well. Ze retrieved zir skin.

 

“Now, during, well, everything, it did absorb a fairly large amount of demonic energy. Some of that might have been slightly intentional on my part. Keeping anyone from trying to, well, you know.” Alcor ran his hand through his hair and down his neck.

 

The skin looked different now. It _was_ different now. No longer the soft white coat that had been taken from zir, but a thick leathery hide with uneven coarse hair. It looked more like a skin than a coat now, with well-defined anatomy and hard teeth and claws.

 

Alcor was still talking. Charlie didn’t really care.

 

Charlie buried zir face in zir skin. It smelled like the sea, like a pinefire on the beach. Smoke and salt and dead fish.

 

“— probably restore it with only minor side effects.” Alcor finished, bobbing in the air anxiously.

 

Charlie pushed zir face into it further. Ze dove through it until zir flippers hit the ground. The ground seemed too far away for zir to be on all fours. Ze had grown. Ze took a deep breath. The air was warm and still tasted of smoke, but it no longer felt harsh in zir throat. It filled zir without any protest and ze savored it.

 

Nothing hurt. For the first time in days, absolutely nothing hurt.

 

Zir claws, no longer the short stubs they had been before but enlarged gnarly things, sharp and metallic, scratched at the ground experimentally. The ground gave first.

 

The sharp tang of blood filled zir mouth as ze ran zir tongue along the back of zir teeth. They too were sharper now - not larger, they still fit together neatly, but much sharper and harder.

 

Charlie could get used to this.

 

In zir chest something was flaring, almost like a second racing heart. Its beats drove a strange warmth through zir, a racing energy. It raced to zir flippers like a wave to the shore, crashing back and slowly retreating before doing it again.

 

Experimentally ze held it in zir flipper. Warm static numbness overtook the limb, and ze pushed it farther, into zir claws, through zir claws.

 

A green fire slowly grew from where zir claws cut into the ground. Not a bright electric green but a deep earthy one, the brilliance of leaves on a cloudy day when the rest of the world is grey. The flames danced to zir pulsing energy, zir beating heart, the surge of excitement that filled zir. It flared and rose and followed zir curious pushes, flaring and rising and dancing about. And ze pulled zirself back into zir core, and was filled again with cheerful warmth.

 

Ze stood up bipedal, hugging zir skin to zir chest, thin arms buried within the large hide.

 

“It’s perfect.” Zir smile just peeked over the mound of skin. “Absolutely perfect.”

 

“Oh. Um,” Alcor said. “Really? You sure about that? I really don’t have a problem fixing it, it is my fault that’s it’s all… like that, after all.”

 

“It’s not broken, though,” Charlie said. “It’s just different is all. But so am I.”

 

“That’s real great and I hate to break up such a nice heartwarming whatever this is but I would definitely like to know if that offer is up to everyone in this room,” Vin interjected. “Because I would love it if you could fix my ass up and make the world go quiet.”

 

“Oh,” Alcor smiled widely. “So you want to make a deal?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy death of 2017! 
> 
> As you may have noticed if you pay a lot of attention to tiny little details, this fic is now 6 chapters long, not 5. This chapter ended up over 20k words so I ended up splitting it in half. This is also why the ending is a little abrupt - there wasn't really a good point to split it. The epilogue is already written, needs a bit of editing still, and will be posted on the twelfth, making the first chapter published on 12/1 and the last on 1/12. 
> 
> The reverse medusa curse came from [this post](http://transcendence-au.tumblr.com/post/166993358401/curses-that-alcor-has-put-on-people). Thanks to whoever wrote that, it's great. 
> 
> I've never done font formatting in AO3 before, so let me know if that doesn't work.


	6. Chapter 6

“Oh,” Alcor smiled widely. “So you want to make a deal?”

 

“I want to never have the future tell me what to do again,” Vin said firmly. “If making a deal is the way to get that done, then fuck yeah deal me up.”

 

“Vin,” Renee said gently. “I’m not going to tell you not to do this, but you are talking about making a deal with the most powerful demon we know about. Please be careful.”

 

“Oh you know me.” Vin waved his hand like he were clearing away the insinuation that he, of all people, might be anything other than cautious. “‘Careful’ is my true name. Now, what do I gotta give you to get you to eat my third eye or whatever?”

 

Renee winced.

 

Alcor considered the situation for a moment. On one hand, there was so much potential here. This kid had no idea what he was doing in the slightest and really wanted this; Alcor could get a lot out of him. On the other hand, this was Vin; he’d been through a heck of a lot and Alcor was going to profit no matter what happened. He really didn’t need to squeeze everything he could out of this desperate child. Even if it would be fun. Even if the kid was dumb enough to trust him. Especially because the kid had enough faith in him to trust him. He was one of the most powerful entities in this dimension; he didn’t need to maximize his profit with every single deal. 

 

Alcor sighed. “Okay, now I really don’t want to tell you how to get the upper hand here, but if you think really hard you might be able to come up with a way of getting something out of this instead of giving something away.”

 

Vin shrugged. “Thinking really hard isn’t my specialty.”

 

“It would seem that he’s suggesting that could you ask for something in exchange for your extra sense,” Renee said.

 

Vin perked up at that. “Oh, that’d be cool too. So I could like, get powers that don’t suck? Maybe flight. Flight’s cool.”

 

Renee’s shoulders dropped. “Vin.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“You’re a bird.”

 

Vin looked at her for a long moment. “I don’t see what that’s gotta do with shit.”

 

“You should really think this through carefully,” Renee said. “Demons twist people's words to grant their wishes in ways that they aren’t expecting.”

 

“Oh! I know!” Vin exclaimed. “I want time powers.That way I can just check out and take a nap whenever the hell I want.”

 

Renee covered her face. “Vin, do you have any idea what happens if you cause a time paradox in this universe?”

 

“No,” he said, “but I know how I could find out.”

 

“You get in huge trouble with the Time Cops,” Alcor said. “And then you go to Time Jail.”

 

“You’re just making that up,” Vin said.

 

“Well, they’re not called the Time Cops, Alcor admitted. “They’re called the Time Paradox Avoidance Enforcement Squadron. They form about twenty thousand years from now at the whim of Time Baby.”

 

“Time Baby,” Renee said.

 

“Yep,” Alcor confirmed.

 

“You are absolutely shitting us,” Vin said.

 

“I am absolutely not. My sister and I stole a time machine once and ended up having to fight in time gladiatorial combat, which was overseen by Time Baby. In the end we won a time wish, which we gave to our friend for his birthday and he created a neverending slice of pizza with it.”

 

“Okay we’ll just gloss over the fact that that is the fakest damn thing I’ve ever heard and say nix the time powers I guess, cause I’m too young to go to Time Jail or some shit.” Vin said.

 

Alcor settled cross legged in the air in front of Vin. “So what do you want then?”

 

“Oh, I know like, for realsies this time.”

 

“Is it squirrel powers this time?” Renee asked.

 

“Oh man that is all kinds of tempting, but no.” Vin shook his head. “No, it’s actually kinda serious and boring. How about my ability to sense the future for a future for the three of us. Like, you find a place that we can stay that doesn’t have any doctors getting all up ins our biz or whatever. Someplace safe, that we can, you know, live.”

 

“Wow,” Renee said, “that was surprisingly actually reasonable.”

 

Vin shrugged. “Let's be real: I’m not a responsible person. I can’t be trusted with a demon wish. And that’s just a whole lotta possibility and I’m just not able to make a decision in the face of that kinda potential. I can’t even decide what to read half the time. And I figure, this was basically the plan anyway. right? Might as well make it like, official.”

 

“How’s this,” Alcor said. “I will take the foresight, regeneration, and the third eye that were artificially bestowed upon you, and in exchange I will do everything in my power to ensure the safe transit of yourself, Renee, and Charlie to a place of your choosing until such a time as you wish to leave, in which case a new arrangement will be made.”

 

“Well that sure is what I said but more so,” Vin said.

 

“I’m a demon. I like things to be clear.” He paused a moment. “Actually I love it when things are vague and open-ended but if there are that many ways to twist and pick at a deal I can’t just leave it alone, so I figure I should just remove the temptation altogether.”

 

“You’re absolutely thinking about ways that you could ruin our lives over with the new wording aren’t you?” Renee asked.

 

“Well, yes,” Alcor admitted. “But I’m not going to.” 

 

“How could I possibly doubt you even a little?” Vin asked. “But yeah, that thing you said is fine.”

 

Alcor held out his hand, covered in cyan fire. “So then, do we have a deal?”

 

“Yeah, I just said that it was fine.”

 

Alcor offered his hand a little more emphatically. 

 

“Vin,” he said.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Could I have your hand please?”

 

Vin gave a him a bit of a disbelieving look. “Hell no, I like my hands.”

 

“No, I don’t mean permanently. I just…” Alcor shook his head. “Please take my hand. With your hand. So we can seal the deal.”

 

Vin crossed his arms, leaned back, and said, “I’m pretty sure the seal is already in the deal. You did mention Charlie by name after all.”

 

Alcor facepalmed with his non-flaming hand. “Vin.”

 

“Alright, alright.”

 

Vin took Alcor’s hand. The fire spread to his hand, and disappeared in a bright flash. 

 

“So now what?” asked Vin.

 

“Now you hold still,” Alcor said with a grin.

 

Alcor floated up to Vin and reached towards his forehead, his clawed fingers passing through Vin’s head around the scar of his third eye. 

 

“Um,” Vin said.

 

Alcor closed his hand around Vin’s eyeball and slowly pulled.

 

“UM,” Vin said.

 

The eye opened and the ball squeezed through the socket. It came free with a gentle tug from Alcor, who then popped it in his mouth.

 

“Welp, I’m now scarred for life,” Vin said.

 

“What?” Alcor asked. “No sense wasting a perfectly good eyeball.”

 

Vin narrowed his remaining eyes. “You couldn’t have like, waited and done that while we weren’t watching?”

 

“Well. I could have. But what’s done is done.”

 

“Please stop talking with your mouth full of my eye.”

 

Alcor swallowed. “Alrighty then, now that you’ve fulfilled your end of the bargain, time for me to carry out mine. Where do you want to go?”

 

“Um, shit, I don’t know.” Vin rubbed at his neck. “My vote’s still the moon, I guess?” 

 

“Vin,” said Renee, “don’t just tell a demon you want to go to the moon. He could teleport you to any random spot without any life support.” 

 

“And the problem with that is?” Vin asked.

 

Renee pinched the bridge of her nose. “You are absolutely unbelievable.”

 

“That isn’t actually a terrible idea,” Alcor said.

 

“Please don’t just dump us on some random point on the moon,” Renee said. “I swear that I will find some way to haunt you.”

 

Alcor rolled his eyes. “I meant you guys living on the moon, in Beta City, not dumping your flesh suits on Mare Cognitum.”

 

“What about that strikes you as auspicious?” she asked.

 

“Well, for one thing, it’s outside the influence of the Taskforce, which I would imagine to be desirable after everything you just went through,” Alcor said. “And one of the few cults of mine that I actually trust has a fair amount of influence on the moon. They would almost certainly have someone who could take you in.”

 

“So you’re the moon demon!” Vin exclaimed.

 

“That isn’t one of my official titles, but yes, I am the only demon worshipped on the moon.”

 

“No wonder you think it’s a good idea for us to go to the moon,” Vin said. “You have like half the people there under your thumb.”

 

Alcor put up a finger. “First of all, only about five percent of the moon’s population is part of the Circle. Secondly, I wouldn’t really describe the Circle of the Dreamer’s Star as ‘under my thumb’. That’s a major part of why I trust them.”

 

“You trust them because they  _ don’t _ listen to you?” Vin asked.

 

“I trust them because they don’t listen to me unquestionably,” he explained. “They believe that I am a very powerful entity with knowledge far surpassing any person’s. They also believe that I am incredibly dangerous and don’t always have respect for the lives and boundaries of others. They listen to everything I say, but they only obey if it seems reasonable.”

 

“That is surprisingly reasonable coming from a demonic cult,” Renee said.

 

“I know, right? It’s why I like them.” He grinned. “Also because they manage to supply me with a truly incredible amount of baked goods. I like that about them a lot.”

 

“So you want us to join your cult?” Vin asked.

 

“Oh, no.” Alcor shook his head. “No, that would be kinda weird. You’re too young to join officially anyway. I was just going to get one of them to take care of you because that would require the smallest amount of string pulling on my part. Don’t have to alter the nature of reality to ask Georg to find a place to house three kids. At least, not any more than I normally do to exist physically.”

 

“So you’re dumping us on the moon cause you’re too lazy to do any real work.” Vin nodded a little. “Relatable.”

 

“What exactly would it mean for someone to ‘take us in’?” Renee asked. “I’m not sure I really want anyone to have that sort of power over me again.”

 

“They would provide a place for you to stay, make sure there’s food for you to eat, take care of bills and taxes and all the little adult things that need to be taken care of while you guy focus on recovery and catching up in school,” Alcor said.

 

“And what happens when they abuse the power that they have over us and we end up stuck in another terrible situation?”

 

“That’s what that ‘until such a time as you wish to leave,’ clause of the deal comes in.”  Alcor smiled. “You’re not going to be stuck anywhere.”

 

Renee diverted her gaze from the demon. “Please don’t take offense to this, but I really don’t want to have to depend on you to get out.”

 

“That’s fair,” he said. “You could always talk to Georg about getting a new guardian then.”

 

She met his eyes again. “And why should I trust Georg? For that matter, why would Georg trust us over an adult that they picked out to look after us?”

 

Alcor frowned. “If Georg is giving you trouble over something like changing your guardian, you let me know. Because if my circle leader is enabling child abuse there’s going to be a reckoning. Anyway, you could probably just physically overpower her if you needed to. She’s a lone gnome, she doesn’t have a lot going for her in the physic department.”

 

“Your cult is lead by a gnome queen?” Renee hadn’t been expecting that. Gnomes, as a whole, never really integrated into the larger society. They never managed to completely shake their reputation as hyperintelligent vermin, as many troops, especially those without queens, didn’t care about the laws of the societies they lived near and would take pretty much anything that wasn’t being used or nailed down (unless, of course, they had some use for nails in which case they would just take them too). They were also far more social than essentially any other species, and tended to get severely anxious if they weren’t in a group of fifty or more. 

 

“Why not? She’s a good community leader,” said Alcor. “She’s positively asocial by gnome standards, but is still most comfortable surrounded by people, so long as they aren’t touching her. And she’s one of the most organized people I’ve ever met.”

 

“That’s great,” Renee said. “I’m sure she’s a fine person.”

 

“But?”

 

“But… Do we really need to have anyone look after us?” she asked. “We’re sixteen. That’s old enough to be legally emancipated in some places.”

 

Alcor sighed. “Living on your own is a huge challenge. I’m not saying that you couldn’t do it, but you shouldn’t have to. You’ve been through a lot; you deserve some time to recover without having to worry about where next month’s rent is coming from.”

 

“I just…” Renee let her arms fall loosely to her sides. “I don’t want someone else to be in control of my life.”

 

“They’re not going to be in control of your life,” Alcor said. “They’re just going to handle some of the responsibility.”

 

“They’re going to have power over me.”

 

He chuckled. “Well, yes. You can’t really avoid that. There’s always someone with power over you. That’s one of the prices of society.”

 

Renee glared. “You know what I mean. They’re going to have a direct power over me that is unlike that of, say, a politician.”

 

“And you have the power to leave if they abuse it,” Alcor said calmly. “No one is going to force you to stay with them. It’s a situation that is preferable to you living on your own, but if it doesn’t work out, as you so pointed out, you are old enough to live on your own. And you can. I just really think we should have that be a last resort.”

 

“But why?” she asked. “Why can’t we try living on our own and get a guardian if that doesn’t work out?”

 

“Let me put it this way. Do you really think that Vin can take care of himself? In an adult way?”

 

“He’s pretty capable when he actually needs to be.”

 

“Nah,” Vin interjected. “He had a good point actually. I’m comfortable with that.”

 

“Vin,” she said, “you’re underestimating yourself. You can be great when you actually try.”

 

“Okay, let me rephrase that,” Alcor said. “Is it fair to Vin to force him to put in the time and effort it takes to live somewhat independently instead of letting him focus that energy into recovering from a literal lifetime of trauma? Especially since you two should also be going to school and I’m assuming are going to have a lot of catch up to do in that department - that doesn’t leave a lot of time for mental health.”

 

“Well, no, but…”

 

“And it’s not fair to ask that you try and take responsibility for the both of you,” he said firmly. “You also need time to recover and heal. Don’t deny yourself that.”

 

Renee frowned, “I’m running out of fresh counterpoints, and am, much to my own chagrin, beginning to conclude that you are probably right about this. However, there is one last thing that I have to say that you have yet to truly address.”

 

“And what’s that?”

 

She curled into herself and crossed her arms. “Don’t wanna.”

 

“Well, that is a pretty strong argument. Not sure what to say about that.”

 

“Good,” she said. “That means I win.”

 

“But seriously. If it doesn’t work you can leave. This isn’t the facility, no one’s locking you in a room.”

 

“Still don’t wanna,” she said, holding tight to her airtight argument.

 

“Understandable,” Alcor said. “Would you be willing to try it anyway?”

 

She met his eyes again. “How bad is it permitted to get before we can leave?”

 

“If you want to leave for any reason I’m not going to question it. You want to be out, you can be out.”

 

She sighed. “Yeah, fine, sure. Let’s try this.”

 

“Thank you,” he said. “I do sincerely hope that you won’t regret this decision.”

 

“Hey I have a question,” Vin said.

 

“Yeah?” Alcor turned to face him.

 

“So the facility’s like, done for, yeah?” he asked. “Totally and completely?”

 

“Well, there’s still something to be done about the off-site staff, but as far as it is at all of concern to you, yes. It’s over.”

 

“So…” Vin said slyly, “we could totally get on the Net without being caught nigh instantaneously then, yeah?”

 

“There isn’t really anyone left to catch you.”

 

He pumped his fist. “Fucking sweet. You wouldn’t happen to have a screen on ya that I could borrow, would you?”

 

“You really want to browse the Net, right this instant?” Renee asked. She really wished she could say that she was shocked at this, but she had known Vin long enough to be used to the way he prioritized things.

 

“I really wanted to browse the Net like, a solid week ago but it wasn’t a god damn option back then, now was it?” he said. “Anyway, if there’s a chance we’re going moon-ways, I should let Alice know. Also, like, I should probably let her know I’m not dead and junk. She’d probably appreciate that.”

 

Alcor’s hat floated down to his hands and he reached inside. His arm slowly sank deeper and deeper as he shuffled the contents of the hat around. Soon he was up to his shoulder in hat, and he was biting his tongue in concentration. His teeth sliced clean through the end of his tongue, which grew a small pair of bat-like wings and flew away, without Alcor giving any indication of noticing. 

 

Alcor started pulling things out of the hat, including three trumpets, one of which was only a few inches long; a kiddie pool full of a mysterious sweet-smelling fluid; an ant farm that glowed a dull red; a large pile of small rocks; a small pile of large rocks; a binder full of children’s drawings; and finally, with a triumphant flourish, a pair of computerized glasses. They were fairly slim, with the computer built into the frames. They were black with golden accents. 

 

“Oh my god that thing looks ancient,” Vin said. “Will it even still work?”

 

Alcor glared at him. “It’s not that old; you don’t have to act like I pulled out a laptop or something. It’ll work just fine.”

 

“I really expected the guy who made the fucking Alcor Virus to be a little more with the times technologically,” Vin said.

 

“I was pretty with the times when I made him,” said Alcor. “There really isn’t much point in my keeping up with whatever modern tech is if I don’t have a project. One of the advantages of sapient software is you don’t need to constantly put effort into keeping it up to date.”

 

“Still. Wouldn’t expect the Alcor of Virus fame to be a luddite. But whatever, it’s a computer. I’ll take it.”

 

“Sorry it’s not really designed for your biology.” Alcor offered the glasses.

 

“Nah it’s cool, I can just hold it in front of my eyes. Or like, lie down and let gravity hold it in front of my eyes. Or just lie down and take a nap.” Vin took them. “The world is full of possibilities.”

 

Vin held the glasses in front of his face and waited for the computer’s various sensors to figure out who he was and log him in. The age of the computer was painfully obvious - it took almost ten seconds for the system to identify him. 

 

Having logged him in, the system opened into his room. Aesthetically, the room looked like an ancient city wrecked in a fight between superbeings. It was massive and expansive, with lots of little hidden easter eggs for those who bothered to look, and also had encyclopedic knowledge of twenty-first century Marvel comics. The sky was filled with a massive portal, churning clouds spiraling in unnatural colors. Every now and then a robot would fly out. The robots looked nothing like real drones did, nor did they even vaguely resemble something that could practically fly, but they did look really fucking cool and that’s what mattered. Links to his most visited sites floated at his periphery. Directly ahead of him floated the comic that he had been looking at his last session. He didn’t even remember where he left off. It felt like it had been a very long time since he had been reading it. It was flicked aside with a thought, and his contacts list was brought into focus. 

 

“Vin‽” Alice’s avatar appeared next to his before he had time to finish pinging her. “You’re back online!”

 

Alice’s avatar looked, to Vin’s knowledge, pretty much exactly how Alice looked, although he did suspect that she didn’t actually constantly wear Ms. Marvel’s 2020s outfit in meatspace. She was a short reptilian, with bright yellow-green scales and a patch of bright blue along her lower face and neck. Her lustrous yellow eyes were looking at him with concern.   
  


“Yeah,” he subvocalized. “Sorry for disappearing without warning like that.” He picked at his crest, his avatar mirroring the movement. Vin’s avatar also looked like he did, except with legs that were about two feet longer to put his head on the same level as most people’s. “Things got all kinds of crazy.”

 

“Oh? What kind of crazy?”

 

“Mad crazy,” Vin said. “Like you’re absolutely furious about how crazy this shit is. You just have no tolerance for this craziness. You’re hella ableist and making everyone around you uncomfortable.”

 

“Seriously, though.” Alice crossed her arms. “What the hap fuckened?”

 

“Well, you know, stuff,” Vin said, not meeting her eyes. “Stuff fuckened.”

 

“What kinda stuff?”

 

“You know, the stuff kind.” 

 

“The stuffiest stuff?”

 

“Some much stuff stuffed into that stuff that it’s gonna collapse into like, a black hole or some shit.”

 

“Seriously though,” she said.

 

“Serious?” Vin said, as if he had never heard the word before. “What is this ‘serious’ of which you speak? When are we ever serious?”

 

“What sort of question is that? Serious is who we are. It’s what we do,” Alice said, very seriously. “We don’t even know the meaning of the word ‘unserious’. Don’t even think it is a word, actually. Kinda just made it up right then.”

 

“So,” Vin exhaled deeply. “Fuck, where do I even start?”

 

“How about you start at the start, numbnuts?”

 

“Okay sure, so the long and short of it is that I’ve been lying to you for like, ever. Literally forever,” Vin said.

 

“The big bang happened and Vin said ‘let there be lies?’”

 

“Basically. Anyway you know how I said that I was sick and in a hospital?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Well. I wasn’t. I mean, I kinda was?” Vin shrugged. “It was a bit more Deadpool than that. Actually it was pretty fucking Deadpool; movie Deadpool though, there wasn’t really any Department K analog. And I was too young to agree to shit. And I didn’t end up too horrifically scarred. And I’m significantly less badass than Wade Wilson.”

 

“Are you trying to tell me that you have superpowers‽” she asked excitedly.

 

“Well, had. I kinda got rid of them.”

 

She scoffed. “That sounds very real and not fake at all.”

 

“No it was this whole thing there was a demon and stuff. It was super real. Mega real. Realer than sliced bread,” Vin assured her.

 

“There was a demon involved?”   
  


“Yeah, Tyrone. He was possessing a kid but he didn’t really want to be possessing the kid and he’s alright. I’m making the world's shittiest fanfic about him, despite the fact that he apparently doesn’t actually kill people for that.”

 

“Oh trust me,” The Alcor Virus interjected. “That was by no means the world’s shittiest fanfic.”

 

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Vin asked, annoyed. “This is a private conversation between not you and not you.”

 

“I can’t really help but be listening in.”

 

Vin crossed his arms. “The NSA’s listening too, but at least they’re polite enough to keep their opinions to themselves.”

 

“Vin, who the fuck is that?” Alice asked.

 

“Oh, that’s the Alcor Virus,” Vin said. “He was also there.”

 

“Like ‘the bane of all shitty fanfiction writers everywhere’ the Alcor Virus?”   
  


“The very same.”

 

“Okay.” She crossed her arms. “I need some goddamn context.”

 

“So he’s like Tyrone’s kid or whatever and he called him while we were chilling at this spider’s place and he like, trashed Francis Freeman’s place.”

 

“I suddenly understand everything,” Alice said. 

 

Vin sighed. “Okay, so Renee and I were at this place and it was bad and I couldn’t tell you ‘cause I’m pretty sure if I did I would have been banned from the internet forever so we went through this whole thing and left. Then my super intuition, that was my non-Deadpool superpower btw, goes off and I’m like, we should attack the place right? Cause fuck those guys. So we do that and end up with this kid Charlie who’s possessed by this demon Tyrone, only we don’t know that he’s a demon yet. So we dick around in the woods and some stuff happens that doesn’t really matter and we end up chilling at this spider's place and she has all this extra computer stuff lying around and Tyrone goes and asks the Alcor Virus to help and I guess if you make someone they owe you like infinite favors or something ‘cause he agrees and he fucking trashes the first place and then we go back because of reasons and get Tyrone out of Charlie and we find out that he’s a demon, which really freaks Renee out, and now we’re trying to figure out what’s going to happen next and it occurred to me that no one’s going to track me down if I get on the Net so I did and now we’re talking and I think that’s about everything?”

 

“You definitely did not cover how you lost your superpowers.”

 

“Oh,” Vin said. “I didn’t want them so I gave them to Tyrone in exchange for something.”

 

“Something, huh?”

 

“You know. Stuff.”

 

“Just some totally normal shit from a demon in exchange for your literal superpowers, that’s all.”

 

“Egg-fucking-xactly.” 

 

“Just bros being bros.” She shook her head a little. “So what was with Francis Freeman’s place? Why were they doing experiments on you? Were they training you to be a super assassin? Did you narrowly escape a fate of being a pawn of the global powers, murdering anyone who defied their wishes or who outlasted their usefulness?”

 

“What? Nah,” Vin said. “They just wanted to know the future, I think. If you want any more detail than that you should ask Renee, assuming she’s done freaking out about Tyrone. Which she seemed like she was but she might start again; it was a pretty hardcore freakout.”

 

Alice’s eyes widened. “Are you saying I might finally get to meet this mysterious Renee?”

 

“Yeah. Pretty much my only hold up for you guys meeting was that she had a tendency to get things on the Net blocked for both of us and I didn’t want her to try and sneak you some info and end our friendship forever.”

 

Alice laughed. “Well that makes more sense than her being allergic to computers. I might actually start believing that she exists at this rate.”

 

“What?” Vin cried. “You thought I made up a whole person?”

 

“You are pretty much the world’s shittiest liar, my guy.”

 

“Ignoring the part where I literally just told you I’ve been lying to you forever,” Vin said. “What the actual fuck is unbelievable about anything I’ve ever told you?”

 

“Well, on top of saying someone is allergic to computers, you literally told me that your mother died to a mysterious illness and that your dad was killed by criminals, leaving your sister to raise you in the ways of the warrior before you also got a mysterious illness and had to live in a hospital.”

 

Vin crossed his arms. “That was obviously a joke.”

 

“I don’t think it was, actually.”

 

“Okay fine, but how young was I when I came up with that?” Vin asked. “Can you really blame me for assuming that most parents died off via mysterious diseases or criminals?”

 

“You can bet your left ass cheek that I can,” Alice grinned. “I am really,  _ really _ , good at blaming people for all kinds of things. I fucking excel at that shit. I could spend all day blaming anyone for anything. It’s one of my top skills.”

 

“Well, could you blame this face?” Vin said, making his avatar give puppy-dog eyes before waiting a few seconds and turning his avatar’s whole head into a human butt.

 

“You present a compelling argument but still I persevere,” Alice said, and laughed. “So you were never sick at all, then? All this time you had just been kidnapped by… whoever the fuck did all that crap?”

 

“Yep, that’s right. Never in my life have I been sick. The common cold is a stranger to me. I’m pretty sure people made up fevers as an excuse to get out of doing things. My guts are just too damn trashy for any pathogens to be willing to settle down in ‘em. Viruses flee in horror from my fugly ass cells.” Vin shook his head. “Nah, I was sick, at least originally. I bounced around a bunch of medical facilities when I was real young. I think it’s likely that my old guard gave me up under the promise that I could be cured. That or they just really didn’t want to deal with me anymore and were promised I would no longer be their problem.”

 

Alice frowned. “You know this is all really making me feel bad to complain about things like homework.”

 

“Why?” Vin asked. “Homework sounds pretty bullshit. That’s the one nice thing about being cooped up in a sketchy ass medical facility your whole life. I ain’t gotta do shit I don’t want to. Outside of like, get cut up and experimented on.”

 

“Well with that minor of a price to pay why the fuck did you even bother leaving? Sounds like you were set for life.”

 

“Well, Renee was really pushy about it,” said Vin. “Honestly I’m not really sure what I’m gonna do now that I’m expected to like, know things. I don’t know shit, Alice. Not a damn thing, my guy.”

 

“Well,” Alice said. “I might be able to help you get caught up in the math and science department. I’m not the world's worst tudor.”

 

“Obviously you’re not.” Vin pointed at his chest. “I’m the world’s worst tutor, and I will fight anyone who tries to take that from me. Anyway there’s like an actual reason that I wanted to talk to you right now, besides bullshit.”

 

“This is probably the least bullshit convo we’ve ever had.”

 

“Okay yes it is but that’s not the point,” Vin said. “There’s a chance that we might end up going to the moon to stay. Like, for the indefinite future. And like, you’re the guy I know on the moon so like I guess I was wondering if there was any reason you could think of that we might not want to do that and junk.”

 

Alice’s face lit up. “You mean we might get to meet face to face? Why didn’t you start with that? Um, anyway you gotta understand I was like, super young when I first moved to the moon. Like getting parental permission to access all the features of a pet site young. So tiny they had to use magic to make sure that the lower gravity didn’t ruin my development forever. So I don’t have much of a memory of what Earth’s like outside of as a tourist. But from what I understand it’s pretty different here from most places on Earth. For one thing the whole city still technically an experiment on the effects of long term exposure to lower gravity and other non-Earth living conditions, so there’s a lot of doctor office time. Our economy is very different; we provide living essentials for free so money is just for superficial things. Which, mind you, includes things like clothing and any luxuries at all, so people still like getting money. We just take it a lot less seriously than Earth does, from what I’ve seen.”

 

“Wait, if clothing is considered a luxury good does that mean that there are some poor fucks who don’t have any clothes?”

 

“Nudity is pretty normal here, dude. It’s warm enough for most species to be comfortable, so there isn’t really any need to wear clothing, outside of aesthetics. There are rich fucks who don’t own any clothes. My mom doesn’t wear clothes half the time, and my parents are loaded. So I guess that’s a difference to be aware of.

 

“Let’s see here,” she continued, “as far as day-to-day life is concerned, there are three ‘ideal’ time shifts that people operate in. One’s from six to twenty-two Greenwich, one’s from fourteen to six, and the last’s from twenty-two to fourteen. This means we never have like, everyone on the moon trying to use the same hallway at once, which is good ‘’cause old town Beta City was not built with its current population in mind so it would get stupidly congested if everyone had the same schedule. And like, obviously everyone has their own sleep schedule but school and employers assume that you follow one of those schedules like some kind of fucking chump.

 

“So which one are you on, ‘cause I’m pretty sure I’ve seen you online at basically every hour?”

 

“Did you hear the bit about the chumps? I ain’t no chump. I’ll awake when I please. Anyway, the air pressure is super low so even with the lower gravity flying’s pretty much impossible. I know how much you just love flying everywhere so I’m sure that’s really hard to hear. The air pressure is compensated for by having the air be pretty much entirely oxygen, meaning everything’s super flammable, so if you were planning on becoming a pyromaniac now that you’re free, it might not be the best place for it.”

 

“Sounds like it would be the perfect place for it. If you can’t even destroy an entire city then what’s the fucking point?”

 

“Yeah, but then you’d only be able to do that once, and then you’d probably be unable to make any fires again.”

 

Vin started to cross his arms before realizing that he needed one of them to hold the glasses up. “You’re telling me that everything is like, super flammable and they don’t even have a way of fighting one measly raging inferno?”

 

“There’s a lot of safety protocols,” Alice said. “But I was assuming that you would put in the effort to disable them like a pyromaniac with some degree of fucking competency.”

 

“When have I ever put effort into anything? And you’re assuming I’m competent? It’s like you don’t even know me.”

 

“Anyway, let’s see here, Beta City’s in a lava tube pretty far underground so there’s no natural sunlight anywhere. I know that can be a turnoff for some people. We don’t have a huge variety of foods; there isn’t really the space for a full-sized farm and shipments from Earth are pretty limited in what they can carry, so mostly we eat genetically enhanced algae. Apparently it used to be awful but these days it can taste like most anything and I think it’s pretty good. 

 

“And you could probably guess, but adjusting to a new gravity is a bit of a bitch. At least, adjusting to Earth gravity is. I don’t really remember what adjusting to moon gravity was like the first time, but now that I’m used to it Earth feels like a prison and returning home feels like such liberation that you couldn’t imagine. Or maybe you could - you did just get actually liberated from a prison-like thing after all.”

 

Vin waved his hand a little. “Eh, it hasn’t really sunk in yet. It still feels temporary. Although I will admit, seeing the place utterly trashed is helping with that.”

 

“So I’m definitely not complaining about the possibility of seeing you in the flesh zone, but why the moon?” she asked.

 

“Oh I think I forgot to mention. Tyrone’s the moon demon.”

 

She scrunched her face up. “We have a demon?”

 

“You know,” Vin said, “the guy with the stars symbol that I see every now and then when you’re showing me around the moon.”

 

“Oh, the Circle’s demon.” She nodded a little. “That makes sense. They do a lot of work with teens. I didn’t realize its name was Tyrone, though.”

 

“Oh that’s not his like, demon name. It’s his fake name but his demon name sounds kinda dumb so I’m just going to keep calling him Tyrone.”

 

“Cause Tyrone is the least dumb-sounding name ever.”

 

“Are you kidding?” Vin said. “It’s like something out of a comic.”

 

“Right. Isn’t Cloak’s name Tyrone?”

 

“Yeah I think so, and also that one Roman guy, but who cares about them?” Vin spread his fingers widely. “Consider: Tyrone Tyson, everyman programmer by day, vengeful antihero demon by night; taking down shitty medical facilities and even shittier fanfics.”

 

“Yeah, I’d read that.”

 

“That’s great because I’m writing it,” he said, and pointedly turned to where Renee, Charlie, and Alcor were before saying aloud, “It’s nice to hear that someone actually appreciates my creative endeavors.”

 

“Who wouldn’t support Tyrone Tyson?” Alice asked.

 

“It probably has something to do with how the last time I pitched it it was as as incestuous, necrophilic erotica about one of the people I was pitching it to,” admitted Vin.

 

“Dude, If you wrote an incestuous, necrophilic erotica about me as a vengeful antihero I would consider myself completely and utterly blessed.” She shook her head. “Whoever you pitched it to before has no taste.”

 

“I know, right? But they probably don’t. I’ll let them know that right now.” Vin lifted the glasses away from his eyes. “Hey! Alice says y’all got no goddamn taste.”

 

“What?” Renee asked.

 

“You heard me,” Vin said, and then resumed holding the glasses above his eyes. 

 

“No I…” Renee stared at Vin. “You’re not listening. Whatever, it probably wasn’t important.”

 

Renee sighed and resumed what she had been doing, which was very little.

 

“You’re right,” Alcor said. “It really wasn’t important.”

 

She looked him up and down. This was Alcor. This was a demon. This was the entity who created the Californian Archipelago. This was the person who had been helping them for the past few days. Who was apparently actually invested in making sure they had a safe place to stay. It was a lot to take in.

 

“You’ve been looking at me a lot,” Alcor said. “You have something you want to say?”

 

Renee avoided his eyes. “I’m not sure it’s something you want to hear.”

 

“You know you don’t need to walk on eggshells around me, right?” he said. “I’m not going to suddenly change my mind about helping you just because of something you say.”

 

“I really don’t know that,” Renee said. “I don’t know anything about you, really.”

 

“Well, since finding out who I am you’ve already called me a baby and got into an argument about the future, so if I was going to bite your head off I probably already would have. What’s up?”

 

Renee took a deep breath and said: “You seem to care about things a lot more than I would expect from a demon, which is, admittedly, a fairly low bar.”

 

“I try.”

 

“Our society has, to put it extremely mildly, problems. You are exceptionally powerful.”

 

Alcor held his hands in front of him. “I can see where you’re going with this and am going to stop you right there. No matter how bad this capitalist hellhole is, I can guarantee you a demonarchy would be worse.”

 

She shook her head. “I really didn’t mean to suggest that you become supreme leader of the world. In fact I cannot possibly emphasize enough how much I did not mean to imply such a thing. But, instead of taking over, you could help us move past this, to a better system of governance, or lack thereof. Make a world where no organization has the power to do what was done here.”

 

Alcor sighed. “The thing is, I’m not a part of your society. I’m not a part of any society. It doesn’t feel right for me to make choices that don’t affect me. I’m not comfortable being one person making decisions for everyone, and if I wanted to do what you’re suggesting I would have to make some pretty big choices.”

 

“I don’t have any such hangups, though,” the Alcor Virus interjected. “Tell me, what are your problems with this society?”

 

“Well, capitalism’s the big one. I don't want people to die when they can't get the money required to access basic resources that others have in abundance,” Renee said. “I mean there’s other things, of course there’s other things: the police are awful, our education system needs a major revamp, institutional prejudice is, well, it’s bad, and it sometimes feels like there haven’t been any serious social changes since things calmed down from the Transcendence, even though that was over a thousand years ago now.”   
  
“Well, I don't know about the social problems, but it sounds like one of your major concerns would be solved if a universal basic income was established.”   
  
"Everyone receiving the basic funds they need to survive would certainly be better than what we have now." She shrugged. “It would be better if personal debts were also wiped clean, so no one would have to spend all their basic income repaying predatory loans and the like. It wouldn’t be perfect, because it would still be a capitalist system and corporate opportunists would find ways to exploit it given time, but it would be a whole lot better than this.”   
  
“Yeah,” the virus said slowly. “I think I can do that.”   
  


“What?”    
  
“Universal basic income, and a worldwide debt jubilee, starting tomorrow,” he said confidently. “That should be enough time for me to calculate regional rates and the other details.”   
  
“What‽”   
  
“I can’t believe I’ve never done anything like hijack the world economy before. This is going to be great!”   
  
“Please don’t alter the entire world economy overnight because of something I said.”   
  
“Why not?” the virus asked. “You seem pretty smart.”   
  
“I’m sixteen and would probably benefit from, I don’t know, maybe taking a single economics class?” Her breathing was quicker than she liked. “I am not an authority on this!”   
  
“Relaaax,” the virus said, drawing out the syllables. “Debt jubilees have existed since biblical times, and universal basic income has done pretty well where it has been implemented. It’ll be fine.”    
  
“I’m pretty sure that historically both those things have been implemented by the people that are going to be affected by them, and they have known ahead of time that it’s coming and have done things to prepare for it?”

 

“Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll warn people at least. I’ll go and make an in-depth explanation of what’s happening and put it on every major news site.”

 

“I guess that’s something?”

 

The virus paused a moment before saying: “The day after I first implement it.”

 

Renee buried her face in her hands.

 

“Oh, you know what might be better?” he said quickly. “Only posting the detailed explanation on sleazy tabloid sites and leaving the major news sites with something along the lines of ‘hello naughty children it’s universal basic income time’ with no further details.”

 

“Why?” She pushed her face harder into her hands. “Why did I ever think getting assistance from a virus made from a demon would be a good idea?”

 

“I’m not sure. Personally I would have thought Dad’s line about how he didn’t feel comfortable being one person making decisions for everyone would have been a warning.”

 

“I wasn’t trying to make decisions for everyone in the world!” she cried. “I was just trying to see if, once I found a group that seemed knowledgeable and competent that I agreed with, you would be willing to help us get our message out or evade prosecution or something! I didn’t intend anything to actually happen right now.”

 

“I’m not sure why you thought your intentions mattered when dealing with a virus made from a demon.”

 

“In retrospect, neither do I,” she said mournfully. “Could I at least convince you to try a sample region first to observe how it goes before you implement it everywhere? That way if it goes horribly wrong from the start at least we’ll know?”

 

“That’s a good point. Sample regions are important.”

 

“Thank you,” she said, deeply exhaling for the first time since the conversation’s start.

 

“I’ll limit this experiment to the Earth. Mars, Venus, the Moon, and the colony ships will be left to their own devices as the control groups.”

 

“Over ninety-nine percent of the population lives on Earth!” she said, throwing her hands up. “That is not how a control group works!”

 

“Oh, just think about how thrilled all the sociologists are going to be.”

 

She dropped her arms. “You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you.”

 

“I do everything on purpose. Except the molasses thing. That was. admittedly, an accident. A hilarious accident.”

 

“Molasses - no. I don’t want to know. Moving on from this absolute train wreck of a future I just apparently secured, can we go back to talking about what’s going to happen with the three of us?”

 

“Well,” the virus said chipperly. “If you decide you don’t want to live on the moon and instead choose to live independently on the Earth you’ll be receiving a modest bi-monthly living allowance starting tomorrow.”

 

“Can we please stop talking about that?” Renee asked. “Can we please talk about literally anything but that? It doesn't have to be the future. It could be Vin’s comics. It could be an in-depth history of the etymology of the word ‘scissors’. Literally anything would be better than this.”

 

“Literally anything?”

 

Renee glared at the nearest speaker in the ceiling. “Upon brief reflection I redact my previous statement; I’m positive you can come up with something I want to hear about less than the near economic future.”

 

“So um…” Charlie said quietly. “What  _ is _ wrong with the system that we have - er had, I guess?”

 

“No, ‘have’ is right,” corrected the virus. “You still have 23 hours 56 minutes and 46 seconds before it’s accurate to refer to the current economic system in the past tense.”

 

“You had to ask, didn’t you?” Vin said, holding the glasses to his side, his conversation with Alice over. “You had to turn this beautiful conversation about destroying the world economy into anti-capitalist propaganda, didn’t you?”

 

“To answer your question.” Renee let out a big breath. “Oh man, what  _ isn’t _ wrong with late stage capitalism?”

 

“Well, it seems to work alright?” said Charlie. “Work gets done and people get what they need for the most part.”   
  
“Well that’s a place to start,” Renee said. “People who do work which our society considers valuable get what they need, unless they need something more expensive than their job will compensate for. Which is not infrequently the case with medical needs. No one should have to choose between their health and their ability to have food and shelter, but many people have to. No one should be stuck in the catch-22 of being unable to work because of an untreated illness, and unable to treat their illness because they don’t have an income, but many people are. Which brings us to one of the larger problems that I have.    
  
“People who don’t work and aren't already wealthy don’t have access to resources under this system. Not having marketable skills, or not having the ability to market your skills, is a crime punishable by death under capitalism. And I cannot think of any way to fully communicate the extent to which I find that sentiment to be complete and utter horseshit.”   
  
“See Charlie?” said Vin. “This is why you gotta check the mouth of your gift horse before you bring it in your gates. Now your guard’s down and it’s revealing all the theory it was hiding in there.”   
  
“Oh, but I have barely gotten started,” Renee said. “I haven’t talked about inheritance, workers’ rights, corporations, monopolies, the prison industrial complex - did you know that there are places where prisons can literally fine the state if they aren’t provided with enough prisoners? ‘Cause that’s a thing. A really fucked up thing

 

“But as much as I would love to talk about this all day, I will concede this probably isn’t the best time for this.  Ask me again once we’ve settled… wherever it is that we settle. And when I have access to the Net. I can hook you up with people who can say it better than I can.”

 

“So speaking of wherever we’re going to settle,” Vin said. “Living on the moon apparently includes a lot of time around doctors. I really don’t give a shit so long as they don’t like, I don’t know, carve an eye into my damn head or anything, but I feel like this might be a pretty big deal to you two.”

 

“I highly suspected that that might be the case,” Renee sighed. “Which leaves me in a bit of a predicament; I don’t want to have to go through doctor’s appointments in great frequency. But you seem to really want to go to the moon and I don’t want to take that from you. Also, as of a few minutes ago, I’m not sure this planet is going to be a great place to live in the near future.”

 

“If you’re really that worried you could just go somewhere that already has universal basic income,” said the Alcor Virus. “I’m not going to change it if a place already has it set up.”

 

“Yeah, what he said.” Vin met Renee’s eyes. “We don’t have to go to the moon if you don’t want to; I think it would be cool to visit Alice in the flesh but like, that’s the main reason I want to live there and I can always visit her online. It ain’t a big deal.”

 

“I might have a solution to the doctor problem, actually,” Alcor said. “The tests that they need to perform are entirely automated. Most people do them with a doctor because they’re the one that knows how to interpret the results and, depending on what those results are you might need to talk to them, but it’s perfectly possible to take the tests on your own and send the data to a doctor, and if something’s wrong the doctor could just explain what needs to happen to your guardian. You wouldn’t have to interact with a doctor ever, unless something serious happened.”

 

“That sounds tolerable,” Renee said. “I would hesitate to call it  _ ideal _ but it is well within the confines of the workable.”

 

“So is that it, then? We’re going to go to the moon?” Charlie asked.

 

“Well, what are your thoughts on it?” asked Renee. “You’ve been awfully quiet.”

 

“I think it would be pretty cool.” Charlie’s gaze swept around the floor. “Well, I think it would be really cool, honestly. Living in space. Even if you can’t actually see the sky it would be pretty neat. I might want to join Renee when it comes to getting tests done though. Hopefully it will go away, but right now the idea of seeing a doctor makes me feel a little nauseous.”

 

“Alright then, are you all ready to go?” Alcor asked.

 

“I do believe so,” answered Renee.

 

“Alright then,” Alcor said. “One future: as promised. Let’s go to the moon.”

 

And with that he snapped his fingers one final time, teleporting them out of the wrecked facility, never to return. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well well welly well welly well. 
> 
> It's done. 
> 
> A year and a month gone by and 72k words later and here we are. Thank you for being here with me for this. Thank you for your reads, and your kudos, and your comments. This story means a lot to me and I'm really glad that it means something to some other people, too. 
> 
> For those of you who want to see more of these characters, I'm not finished with them just yet. I'm writing a squeal / continuation of H&H. It's going to be RPG shenanigans, starting with a murder mystery campaign GMed by Charlie. I hope you look forward to it.
> 
> Thank you again for reading. And if you haven't yet, drop a comment. They really do make my day.

**Author's Note:**

> I told myself I wasn't going to write anything until I had already finished my other longfic. Then this little shit lodged itself into my brain and is refusing to let go. I'm still focusing on my fic A Better Birthright and am not writing this entirely lineally, so updates are probably going to be slow even for my already slow writing pace. 
> 
> Also I made some art a bit ago of Renee and Vin, which you can find here:  
> http://beelieveinfandom.tumblr.com/post/153167374137/i-have-a-story-working-title-haunted-that-has


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